


With Beautiful Reluctance

by m_class



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Character Study, Crew as Family, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Introspection, Jumping onto a moving train, Mystery, Psychological Trauma, Sickbay fluff, Suspense, and other Janeway badassery, relationships, unreality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-03
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2018-10-14 05:33:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 56,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10529952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/m_class/pseuds/m_class
Summary: [COMPLETE] They do not know who they are or where they come from. They do not know how they came to be here, in this overgrown garden with its crumbling observatory. They do not even know their own name. But a series of alarming discoveries--a child's abandoned toys, a woman's frantic recording, a smoking ruin--sends them on a desperate quest to unravel the mystery of what happened here, the fate of these vanished people, and the truth of their own identity.





	1. The Observatory

**Author's Note:**

> I usually tag my stories thoroughly, but in this case, some content warnings would be significant spoilers, so instead, there'll be chapter-specific content warnings in the beginning Notes of some of the later chapters. Please let me know in the comments if a different system would work better for you, and thanks for reading :)  
> (The 'No Archive Warnings Apply' remains true throughout.)
> 
> Author's Note on Chapter 1: I decided to go ahead and post Chapters 1-3 because I have them all written, and/or as a gesture of good faith that all 15 chapters are indeed going to get done...but (I think) the end of Chapter 1 makes a good 'stopping place' if you're looking for one. ;)

> **"I trust your Garden was willing to die...I do not think that mine was—it perished with beautiful reluctance, like an evening star—"  
>  ** **—Letter written by Emily Dickinson, 1880**

 

The sky is overcast and the garden is overgrown.

The person walking up the path takes stock of the worn remains of the once-elaborate landscaping. It is clear that years ago, this was a formal garden, laid out in graceful, exacting symmetry. Now weeds compete with flowering plants that themselves overgrow their assigned spots, sneaking into each other’s beds. Grass pokes up between cracks in the brick terraces, new sprigs dull the once-crisp geometry of the topiaries, and any wildlife would have to be truly desperate before partaking in the murky green water of the birdbaths.

The observer smiles a little to see a long-abandoned wheelbarrow full of rotting vegetation, a shovel leaning against it. To sustain such a garden, a considerable number of specialized tools would once have been stored nearby; it seems possible that they still are. And though you’d have to be mindful of splinters, such equipment is probably in better shape than the garden it once maintained, and could perhaps maintain again.

Continuing up the path, they swallow drily, feeling thirsty. Then they stop, puzzling over the feeling of thirst, of needing to drink something. It’s the first thing they remember feeling in…

It’s the first thing they remember feeling.

Frowning, they continue up the central path, heading towards the structure on the edge of the bluff. As they approach, the sounds of the sea grow louder, waves crashing into the edge of the cliffs far below. Dyed pale grey by the cloudy sky, the ocean stretches out beyond the cliffs’ edge, uninterrupted save for the faint line of the horizon. To the left and right beyond the vast sprawl of the garden, the cliffs continue, chalky white topped with scrubby green, the rugged shoreline eventually fading into a haze of distance.

Passing through what might once have been a rose garden, now overgrown with thorny bushes that snag at their pants as they slip gingerly through the narrowed path, the landscape’s only living being turns their attention once again to the only structure in sight.

It is an observatory, and the closer they approach, the more clearly they can see that it is as worn as the garden that surrounds it. Golden-orange brick, weathered by years of sea winds, crumbles from the buttresses and bears uneven stains around the crown of the central circular structure, the legacy of decades of runoff. The patina-green dome, however, still rises obligingly to meet the overcast sky, and they can’t help but notice that the building’s state of dilapidation gives it an odd sort of kinship with the surrounding landscape. Instead of appearing incongruous, the only work of artificial construction as far as the eye can see, it strikes the same visual tone as the sea-battered cliffs and overgrown garden--worn, peaceful, aging without protest.

Smiling slightly, they continue walking.

As their lips curl upwards, they notice for the first time that their face is covered in a sheen of sweat and grime. Could there be water at the observatory, a place to clean up? It looks long-abandoned, but maybe…

They keep walking, absentmindedly running a hand through shoulder-length hair, and are taken aback to notice that it is not only tangled and greasy, but thick with some kind of dusty grit. Tucking a filthy lock behind their ear, it occurs to them to wonder how they got so dirty.  What were they doing before they were walking through this garden? _Were_ they doing something before they were walking through this garden? Or is this simply the place where their existence began?

Although the questions drift across their mind, vaguely troubling, after few moments it doesn’t feel as though they matter all that much. They don’t bother to glance behind them. It just doesn’t seem important, somehow, to look back at the way they came.

As they approach the observatory, the garden transitions to a pattern of bushes ringing the low brick walls of its crumbling terrace. They smile again at the realization that they can smell the breeze floating in off the sea, but as they continue towards the bushes, reaching an absentminded hand up to wipe their forehead, they catch sight of something out of the corner of their eye, black marks on pale skin.

Startled, they raise their left arm into their line of vision. Large black letters, slightly smudged, are scrawled along the inside of their forearm, elbow to wrist.

      WT YEL YEL PURP WT YEL RED WT GRN  
      OR THEY DIE

Their breath catches slightly at the three harsh words at the bottom.

_What the hell?_

Staring at the... _what is this? Sequence? Abbreviations? Code?_ marked on their own flesh, they try to make sense of the smeared letters. Wt, yel, yel, etc...or they die. Their lips pinch together in frustration. A dire warning, and yet there isn’t enough contextual information here to make even the slightest bit of meaning from it. They hold up their their right arm, reading its lettering in turn.

      FOR VOYAGER  
      FOR NAOMI

 _For Voyager. For Naomi._ They try to summon up a memory of why those names are important, why they were important enough for someone to write them on their skin. For them to write on their own skin, based on the comparative wonkiness of the letters on their right forearm, which must have been written with their non-dominant hand.

_I’m right-handed, then._

Slowly, they lift their right hand in front of their face, staring at it.

 _I’m right-handed. I am a person who is right-handed. Yes, I am._ A faint sense of familiarity rises  as they flex their hand, then bend to pick up a sharp piece of gravel from the path, trying to perform the action without conscious thought. Yes, it’s the right hand that stretches out to lift the stone. They try again, reaching out with their left hand. Yes. It feels less natural this time. It’s not just all in their head.

_I’m a person, then, not just...something unformed. I have a dominant hand. I’ve lived a life. I have...memory. Muscle memory, anyway. The life I’ve lived has imprinted itself on me, at least a bit._

_Enough to be certain...almost certain...that this is my dominant hand._

Abruptly remembering the harsh lettering that originally led them to this discovery, they stare back at the words, feeling a rush of hope. If they can remember their handedness, surely they will be able to recall the importance of the words. The proper nouns, at least! Voyager. Naomi. What...who...are they?

But there’s no memory, and when they try to summon any sort of sensation, a glimmer of the emotion that must have been there when someone-- _when I_ \--so determinedly recorded these words, they come up with a blank there, too. There is only a flat emptiness, and an overriding feeling that it, like what lies behind the garden in the direction they came, surely can’t be very important at all.

With a mild sense of relief, they turn their attention away from such inscrutables and back to the present.

 

The crumbling steps of the observatory are covered with dead leaves, and the tall wooden door sticks a bit as it opens inwards, scraping against the stone floor. But it is unlocked, strengthening their impression that this place truly is abandoned. This comforts them. They aren’t an intruder, then; it’s no skin off the nose of whoever once built and maintained this place that they are here.

The bottom of the round building is empty, drifts of dead leaves scattered against the sides of the echoing space. Glancing upwards, they mount the stone stairs that curl up the curved wall, keeping their hand off the deeply rusted railing.

In the center of the round upper level, an immense bronze telescope thrusts up into the dome. Next to it lies a thin pallet covered with heavy blankets, and they find themselves grinning at the mental image of an astronomer dozing in wait for their stars.

Wooden crates are piled haphazardly against the concave walls, but there is plenty of space for a curious visitor to pick their way between them, examining a sagging shelf covered with thick books and a desk where one of the books lies open, mechanical diagrams covering the open page. Scientific apparati stand on the desk as well, glass and metal and wood, covered with a thick layer of dust. _This stuff is from the dark ages,_ they think, then: _Why did I think that?_

With a sigh, they look down at their arm again, their only connection to the puzzle of where exactly they _were_ before they were, well, here. Naomi is a name, they know that much. A human, feminine name. So Naomi (if there is a real Naomi) must be a feminine human. Voyager is harder to parse. It could be a human name of the more dramatic, creative sort, or more likely, a place, or a ship, or even an organization. Voyager, one who voyages. It sounds like a ship’s name, and they _are_ near the sea. But there wasn’t so much as a dinghy in sight.

Sighing again, they drop their arms to their sides and step away from the desk, kicking aside a pile of mildewing sweaters and an empty, threadbare knapsack to reach the windows that ring the room below the seam where stone meets dome. When they push the cracked wooden blinds further open, the panes turn out to be covered with a thin layer of dust, stuck to the glass even when they rub at it with the hem of their tank top. But they can already imagine how beautiful this room could be on a sunny day after a few rounds of sweeping and scrubbing, the telescope gleaming while views of the azure sea grace the walls more beautifully than any painting.

A few days of cleaning, and this would truly be a pleasant place to live. To stay.

They glance back at their left arm.

      WT YEL YEL PURP WT YEL RED WT GRN  
      OR THEY DIE

It’s the “PURP” that is, upon closer inspection, a giveaway. “WT” and “YEL” might stand for any number of words, but they can only think of one word containing these four letters, and once they have, the other abbreviations quickly corroborate their hypothesis.

_Colors. White, yellow, yellow, purple, white, yellow, red, white, green._

Is this discovery important? Is it not?

Their head hurts.

Leaning against the window for a moment, they close their eyes.

When they open them, the sun must have fallen behind a darker cloud, because the landscape seems a shade dimmer than it did moments before. Or maybe afternoon is simply beginning to fade into evening, draining even more color from the monotone panorama.

_White, yellow, yellow, purple, white, yellow, red, white, green._

_Or they die._

Absently rubbing their thumb against the three words below the abbreviated sequence, they lean against the window, gazing out at the grey sea and the grey sky.

 

There is a sink half-hidden by the tallest stack of crates, rectangular and deep. A few moments of straining against the rusty tap are rewarded by the gush and splatter of orange water. They watch the stream until it clears, then thrust their hands under it, splashing their face and arms. A dusty cup hanging from a hook on the wall is functional enough for them to gratefully gulp ice-cold water, never mind the taste.

Wrenching the tap closed again, they bend down to yank off their boots and set them aside before kicking off their pants. Frowning, they glance once more at the door. There isn’t another living soul in sight, they reassure themselves. Not only their eyes and ears, but their intuition and...something else, some knowledge inside them, is telling them that they are absolutely alone.

 _How did I know that? Why do I know that?_ They frown, but the glimmer of what might have been knowledge or memory or just make-believe is gone. Putting it out of their mind, they continue to strip down, gratefully peeling off a sweat-stained tank top and stinking underpants, and sighing with relief as they free their breasts from their brassiere and their feet from damp socks.

It is, they note, a pale pink brassiere with just a snatch of lace, finding room for elegance despite an overall practical design. They wiggle it thoughtfully in front of their eyes. Some men might like a brassiere such as this, but all in all, they’d have to call it a feminine garment. _I’m probably either female or nonbinary, then._ Despite the message their emotions are sending them that it isn’t so very important to figure any of these things out, getting a bead on their gender gives them a surprising ping of relief.

Hanging the grubby, sweat-soaked clothes over a stray crate to dry, they--she?--splashes icy water over their body, grateful that the day is warm and the floor is too dilapidated for a few puddles to matter. For the first time, they notice a bandage wrapped tidily around their right calve. When they poke at it gently, whatever injury lies underneath stings only mildly in complaint.

There’s hardly the supplies here rewrap a wound hygienically, and the bandage that’s already on seems to be holding up just fine. They shrug and go back to washing, keeping the wrapping dry as best they can.

A desiccated sliver of soap helps to address the sweat that greases their face before being lathered and rubbed greedily into filthy hair. Closing their eyes as they massage their fingers against their scalp, they try on the pronoun. Her. She. _She walked through the garden. She found a telescope. She is washing her hair._

It feels right.

Towelling off with a musty blanket, they--no, _she_ \--slips the malodorous grey tank top and black pants back on, not yet ready to commit to a bar-soap clothes wash that will leave her naked--or dressed in sopping laundry--as she waits for them to dry. Reaching for her socks, she recoils at the reek.

Those, she decides, she’ll leave to air out just a little bit longer.

Chuckling, she sinks down onto the unknown astronomer’s pallet, thinking over her plans for the days ahead. She’d like to find the tools for the garden at some point. She’d like to get the telescope in working order. Although she has no clear memory of looking at them, somehow she knows that she longs to examine the stars.

What else _does_ she know about herself? Her gender. The coppery color of her short, drying hair. That the landscape she has landed in, however deserted, holds a strong appeal for her--tranquil and quiet, with the challenge of slowly restored this overgrown garden and its crumbling observatory to their former glory. And...she yawns, eyelids drooping. Isn’t that just about enough?

_Words on my arms. Ash in my hair._

Uneasiness rises in her throat.

 _Should..._ should _I know more about myself? Is something wrong?_

A wave of disinterest sweeps once more through her mind. The answers to those questions just don’t seem to matter.

 _Yes,_ she decides. _I know enough._

Relief sweeps through her, and she settles down on the pallet. She’s figured out just about everything she needs to know about herself, then. She is a person, she is a she, she likes gardening and the stars, and she is so very, very tired. Here she is, in a place where she can putter away restoring an incredible garden, and observe the stars far more closely than she would ever be able to with just her naked eyes.

And rest.

Closing her eyes, she falls into a deep and peaceful sleep.

 

When she wakes, the clouds have cleared slightly over the ocean, revealing the purple tint of descending dusk. Perhaps, if the clouds blow away by nightfall, she can light a lamp and try to get the telescope cleaned up enough to use this very night. At minimum, she can at least begin the process of polishing and adjusting the old machinery, while gazing through the low windows with her own unaugmented eyes at the stars over the sea.

She smiles.

She would, she thinks, like nothing better than that.

Closing her eyes again, she settles back on the pallet. Another hour to rest, to let the mysterious tension in her neck and soreness in her limbs fade, then she’ll grab some rags and the mildewy telescope manuals and any tools she can find and set to work.

As her mind wanders and her awareness fades into sleep, though, a sequence of words dances once more through her consciousness.

_White, yellow, yellow, purple, white, yellow, red, white, green._

She rolls over onto her side. It doesn’t matter. It’s old, it’s a mystery, it has nothing to do with this remote and peaceful place, and after her birdbath at the sink this afternoon, the lettering is already fading away.

_Or they die._

Jerking awake, she groans, squeezing her eyes shut for one final, futile moment before sitting up and wrapping her arms around her knees. Colors. What could such a nonsense string of colors even signify? How could it possibly be important? She rubs her forehead, where another sensation is starting to grow again--the sensation of a headache.

_Or they die._

“Dammit.”

_There’s something else about me, then. I’m a person, I’m a ‘she,’ I like gardening and the stars, I’m very, very tired...and tired or not, I’m not just going to sit around if someone somewhere might be counting on me not to die._

_I can’t._

As though the pallet exerts a gravitational pull all its own, though, she finds herself drifting back downwards, careful not to look at her own arms as she settles once more onto her side.

_I could take a few more minutes, though...a few hours, maybe...just a night here. In the quiet._

_Just rest._

But what if “they” die while she’s resting, whoever they are?

“Dammit.”

She has no way to know.

Unless she goes and figures out how to find out.

“ _Dammit._ ”

Bouncing up from the pallet, she is a whirlwind of furious motion, seizing the pack she saw earlier and tossing in one of the disgusting sweaters along with the tin cup hanging by the sink. She is down the stairs and out the door without looking back.

 

The garden is shadowed now, unpruned topiaries clustering together to cast pools of darkness across the ground. The tangled rosebushes reach farther out into the center path than she remembers, and as she squeezes between their foliage, thorns pull at her shirt, ripping the fabric and scratching her skin.

Emerging from the gauntlet, she trots briskly down the path, gravel crunching underfoot. There is the wheelbarrow she noticed earlier. There is the towering fountain, dry and silent, that is, she’s fairly certain, one of the first things she ever saw.

Unless she existed before this.

 _I did exist before this._ Sweat, grime, tangled hair, a dominant arm and names inked into her skin: She has a history that did not begin in this place.

Skirting the edge of the fountain’s dry basin, she continues down the path, a long, dark shape coming into focus in front of her.

The wall is as high as the observatory’s dome, maybe higher. It is nondescript, not stone but...cement, she thinks. Yes, some type of mineral-based composite. Craning her neck upwards, she sees nothing poking over the top of the wall to give some hint as to what lies on the other side. While the wall extends, flat and undelineated, as far as she can squint to the right, a dozen or more meters to the left is…

Hesitating only a moment, she walks toward the dark rectangle, peering ahead into the growing darkness and almost falling when she stumbles on something hard and round. Looking down as she slaps a palm against the wall to maintain her balance, her heart almost leaps from her chest when a blank pair of eyes stares back.

Her shuddering breathing calms only when her own eyes begin to fill in the rest of the details: Chipped nose, smooth lips, cracked stone neck. She is looking at the head of a garden statue, presumably innocently decapitated by years of weather. It must have rolled down the slight incline, coming to rest against the base of the wall.

Taking a few more deep breaths and chuckling wryly at herself, she walks forward with a bit more care, mindful of where she is putting her feet. Gradually, the dark rectangle set into the wall resolves into a nondescript metal door, upon which is written in block capitals:

 **EXIT ONLY**  
**Do Not Enter**

Well, she hasn’t walked down here for nothing. She hesitates only a moment before reaching for the metal doorknob.

Somewhat anticlimactically, the door opens into a short, roofed-in cement hall ending in an identical door. This one is marked:

 **WRONG WAY!**  
**DO NOT ENTER  
      EXIT ONLY**

The second door is several paces away from the first one, too far to reach while holding it ajar. Thinking for a moment, she steps away, scanning the ground. Choosing a large rock, she opens the ‘EXIT ONLY: Do Not Enter’ door again, setting the rock against the doorframe to prevent the door from closing completely. After surveying the setup with satisfaction, she glances back at the garden and its observatory.

The stars are beginning to come out.

A breeze caresses her face, the evening air carrying the soft scents of earth and soil, and a hint of the distant sea. There is a floral smell too, some hardy surviving blossom sending winelike perfume into the night air.

She could, she thinks, be happy in this place. Could rest. And not disobey any signs. And listen to the sea and tinker in this observatory and nurture this garden and gaze at these stars.

Is she even the kind of person who disobeys signs? Is she the type of person who leaves a good thing to venture into a complete unknown? If she figures out what the warning on her arms is instructing her to do “for Voyager” and “for Naomi,” “or they die,” will she even be capable of doing it?

_You don’t even know who you are. Why bother blundering around, attempting to accomplish a goal that may not even be real? Why are you so sure you even ought to try?_

A sudden burst of anger surges through her.

_Fuck off. Someone needs me. And I’ll do whatever the hell I want._

Shutting the first door carefully onto the stone, she walks down the short hall without looking back.


	2. The Ruin

The inner door bangs open as soon as the knob is turned, wind screaming into the small hallway, hot ash blowing into her face. She shuts her eyes, coughing, choking; from behind her comes the crash of the door to the garden slamming shut. Blinded, she stumbles backwards, grasping for the knob and twisting. Locked.

She rattles the knob desperately for a few moments, pulling back with all her weight. Letting go of the knob, she yanks the hem of her tank top out of her pants, pulling the shirt up over her face. The air she gulps is stuffy and limited, and her nose is full of the odor of sweat-soaked cotton, but, coughing and gasping, she can breathe clear of the ash. She blinks rapidly, tears pouring down her face as her body clears the particulates from her eyes. After a few seconds, the pain is manageable, her convulsive coughs begin to fade, and--she realizes as her breathing evens--the din around her has quieted.

Carefully, she lowers the hem of the shirt, keeping the fabric wrapped around her nose and mouth as she squints at the scene beyond the door.

The scene beyond the door is a smoking ruin.

A haze of ash and smoke obscures whatever lies farther than twenty or twenty-five meters away; what is visible, however, is arresting enough. Brick, stone, and twisted metal beams lay testament to a structure of some kind that once stood here, all blanketed in layer of shifting ash.

The first thought to cross her mind is, _People. Were there--_

Stepping forward, she picks her way hastily into the wreckage, scanning the ground with eyes that water and sting. Ash, and beams, and sparks, but no clothing or limbs. Thin wires in plastic coatings stick out of what appear to be the remains of some kind of control panels, twisted under the beams. The wires are only partially melted. If people had been caught in this inferno, then, there would be remains, something visible.

There is not.

She lets a long breath out, becoming conscious for the first time of the burns and scratches the wreckage has left on her ankles and calves. Her urgent examination has taken her as close as she can safely get to the smoking center of the ruin, and she turns in a circle of slow châinés to examine the damage around her.

The destruction of...whatever this was...occurred recently enough that she can feel heat radiating onto her face the closer she gets to the middle. Peering at the rubble, she sees more melting wires and what might once have been levers, switches, buttons. _What was this place, this building? What was it used for? And what the_ hell _happened to it?_

In addition to the buttons and the half-melted wires, she can see what might be analogue dials, their indicator arrows hanging limp and their casings cracked. There are other remnants--canisters, slim metal rods, minute detail melting off thin boards whose purpose she can’t even guess at--but one thing it all seems to have in common is that it is more...advanced, yes, this is more advanced technology than the bronze telescope and the dusty instruments in the observatory. And it was all set into what must have been control panels of some sort.

As she continues her examination, one such panel throws a shower of sparks into the air. She steps back, fearing the oily surroundings will combust, but the machinery only sparks weakly for a few seconds before dying back down.

She squints into the distance to the left and right of the door through which she entered this space, wondering just how far that wall extends. Frowning, it occurs to her for the first time how strange it is that, even standing right on the other side of the wall, she didn’t smell smoke.

Wind must’ve been blowing inland, away from the sea.

Another spray of sparks shoots into the air only a few paces to her left. Not thinking to stand back this time, she jumps when fire does begin to lick at the panelling, greedily spreading over the twisted electronics and jumping higher every second. Picking her way away from the flames as rapidly as she can, with no time to consider that she’s moving farther from the door with every step, she falls to her hands and knees when a beam she steps on abruptly shifts. Coughing on a lungful of oily smoke as her shirt falls from her hands, she scrambles to her feet, palms singed and stinging. As she does so, a breeze pushes aside the cloud of smoke in front of her, revealing a second unmarked metal door, this one in a lower wall made of beige stone. Despite the haze of smoke, she can just see over the top, a handful of meters above her head. Poking over it are snatches of what appears to be foliage.

In a few strides, she’s there, glancing back one final time at the ruin before pushing the door open a crack. There is no smoke-filled wind from the other side of this door, nor a plain hallway.

Instead, she sees green.

Pushing the door the rest of the way open, she lets it slam closed behind her and walks into the soft silence of another world.


	3. The Forest

She is standing in the heart of an old-growth forest. The sky seems brighter than she remembers from her evening walk through the garden; perhaps the clouds over the observatory made it seem later in the day than it really is. Gnarled oaks and fragrant pines stretch high into the sky, and a warm late-afternoon sun glimmers down through the leafy canopy, dappling the soft, squishy moss underfoot with golden light.

Inhaling a deep lungful of clear, clean air, she steps forward, wiping sweat and ash from her forehead with the back of her hand.

The moss is as soft as carpeting; for a moment she even considers removing her socks and boots to feel its cushiness against her feet. Telling herself that she’s here on a mission, not a pleasure hike, she reluctantly resists the urge. Slipping through the trees, she continues to venture further from the door, gazing in wonder at her surroundings. Wildflowers grow in patches of sunlight, releasing their spicy-sweet scent to mingle with the smells of soil and pine. In the distance, she can hear the gurgle of a brook.

Frowning, she squints ahead, where a snatch of unexpected color peeks through the trees. Pink? Could it be a flowering bush? As she walks toward it, however, the trees abruptly open into a clearing, and she stares at its contents, bemused.

The clearing is laid out like an indoor sitting room, complete with stuffed couches and chairs, and even a glossy wooden coffee table.

_What in the hell is going on here?_

"Hello?"

No response. Hesitantly, she steps forward.

The furnishings of the...open-air living room?...could have come out of an indoor room in an illustrated storybook: pink gingham chairs, a rocker piled with colorful teddy bears and dolls, the glossy coffee table with its delicate lace covering, and even a marble fireplace, standing stolidly against an immense oak. There is no chimney, just a mantle with a beautiful antique clock, flanked by crystal vases bursting with wildflowers.

Examining the vases, she sees that the water in them is clean and fresh. And a clock like this would need to be wound regularly to keep ticking away as contentedly as it is.

This place was inhabited. Recently.

Frowning, she scans her surroundings. In the far righthand corner of what she can’t help but think of as a room, a tree branch forms what looks like a--

She shakes her head at a faint memory of fairy stories, gilded halls in hollow trees. The branch forms a doorway, and through the doorway is... _You’re kidding me._

She shakes her head as she walks through the doorway, into what can only be described as an open-air kitchen. _What the hell happens when it rains?_

The kitchen introduces a new design element--half old-fashioned storybook, half incongruously utilitarian. An iron woodstove showcases china plates on its filigreed shelves, but the cups in the wooden cabinets are metal with black handles. The table and chairs are also made from plain, serviceable metal and plastic.

Making her bemused way through yet another living doorway, she stares in fascination at what, at first glance, would appear to be a child’s paradise. Toys are scattered around, and a ladder leads to a high wooden treehouse. _If I were a few decades younger, I’d happily stay here forever._

But the toys...

A doll’s tea party has been arranged in the center of the clearing. But while two dolls still sit neatly in chairs, the table has been upended, tiny china cups scattered across the carpet-like moss. A meter and a half in front of her, another doll lies face-up, its porcelain face shattered.  
A half-memory of playing with dolls herself as a child tells her that play is not always as precious as adults assume; less-liked dolls can become the villains of intricate dramas and get “punished” accordingly. She kneels down, examining the broken doll more closely. No. On top of its bland machine-made dress, it wears a handmade sweater, knit clumsily by loving but inexpert fingers. Its hair is tied in a careful bow with a scrap of sparkly ribbon that clashes with the rest of its outfit. This is not a hated doll.

Stomach twisting, she straightens up, continuing to examine the room. A set of jacks is scattered around, as they are meant to be; however, a flash of red alerts her to the fact that their ball has rolled several meters away and was never retrieved. A set of crayons and a drawing pad have clearly been stepped on in haste; several crayons are broken and a dirty adult-sized footprint marrs the top sheet of paper. Near the edge of the clearing, where the soft, clean moss ends, a rag doll lies facedown in the dirt.

Toys are sometimes left in a mess. Loved dolls are never left broken and scattered.

Pushing aside her emotions, she takes a deep breath, an additional goal crystallizing in her mind. She will find out what happened to the child who lived here, and she will help them in any way she can.

Through the trees, she can see yet another high stone wall, curving as it makes its way between the ancient trunks. Similar in construction to the wall she passed through on her way out of the ruin, it is as high as the wall that separated the ruin from the garden. Even if the dense foliage of the forest canopy did not obscure most of the top edge, she would not be able to see what is on the other side.

Before heading towards it, she hesitates. This...setup was someone’s home, however unusual. Surely there must be a note, a to-do list, even just a doodled name, _some_ form of written information to give her a hint about…

Well. Anything. She’ll take what she can get.

Doubling back, she has to thread her way back through the “house” to the living room before spotting a fourth and final room to its left. This is a child’s bedroom, and she almost dashes across it to reach the lilac dresser covered with framed pictures. Not the writing she’d hoped for, but still: information.

One is clearly a wedding photograph, two people who look to be a man and a woman with their arms around each other under a floral archway. Flower petals are being tossed in the air by guests of multiple species behind them while the woman laughs and the man beams. He wears a dark outfit with a sky-blue flower tucked in his buttonhole and another behind his ear, while his new wife wears black pants under a teal tunic with gold edging. She is clearly human and he is clearly not; his face is formed of pale spikes and crags that come together at his nose and forehead, while her face is soft and framed by fluffy blonde hair that has caught several of the floating petals.

The other pictures are a child's drawings. In one, stars of many colors scatter across the paper. In another, a small girl in a pink triangular dress holds the hand of someone who looks like she might be a representation of the woman in the photograph, yellow-haired and even wearing the same combination of black and teal. In the third sketch, three figures stand on the ground (or, at least, on a green line), one of them pointing up at stars that dance across the top of the page. The yellow-haired girl--and presumable artist--is back, holding the hand of a yellow-haired woman, who this time is dressed in an all-purple outfit and an updo. The pointing figure wears black pants and a red shirt, the lines forming her orange hair swirled into a charmingly unrealistically-sized bun. All three figures are smiling.

The fourth and final image she picks up, re-evaluating her estimate of the artist's current age. This must be more recent than the others, and unlike the quintessentially childlike drawings beside it, it reveals an artist who draws people with shoulders and noses, and is even learning the rudiments of perspective. Not to mention that they've mastered writing, and tidy mixed-case lettering to boot--the gaily-colored crowd scene is labeled “Evryone Haveing a Picnic.”

And they’ve mastered spelling. Well, almost.

Gently, she replaces the frame on the dresser. This is the closest she's found to recorded information, and it tells her only that the child who lived here loved the people in her life enough to draw them. And that she also drew a lot of stars.

She glances around the open-air bedroom once more, and is heading back towards the far stone wall when something catches her eye.

None of the toys in the bedroom had originally drawn her attention; unlike those in the playroom clearing, they aren’t ominously scattered. But there is a blue plush toy sitting in the precise center of the bed, posed neatly, almost as if it were waiting for someone.

Around its neck is tied a paper tag.

She is at the bed in two strides, lifting the stuffed creature and smoothing the paper to read three words written in the same large but tidy mixed-case letters as the picnic drawing’s inscription.  
  
      For the Captain.

She picks the creature up and turns it over in her hands, wondering who the Captain is, and what they would want with this toy, and why the child who lived here wanted to give it to them. After giving it a final squeeze, she sets it back on the bed, heading for the far wall.

With her hand on the doorknob of its familiar-looking metal door, though, she hesitates. Something is bothering her. The blue stuffed toy on the bed looked less like something accidentally left behind, a gift abandoned before it could be given, and more like something positioned intentionally, waiting to be found. Did the child who left--or was taken--from this place have reason to believe the intended recipient would happen upon it? If so…

Frowning for a moment, she finally hits upon the realization that has been dogging the back of her mind. The creature was positioned facing, not towards the doorway, but into the woods. Specifically, in the direction of the garden and the observatory and the still-smoking ruin. And she’s quite certain no one else is back there. If the child was expecting the Captain to come from that direction, well. That stuffed toy will be a long time waiting.

But could the Captain be somewhere beyond this door?

By process of elimination, if they’re not in the garden or sailing beyond the sea’s horizon--or lost to that inferno, a small voice whispers in the back of her mind--they’d have to be.

She sighs.

Even if they _are_ behind the door, she has no way of knowing if she’ll ever encounter them.

Still, she turns, walking back to the bed and hesitating only a moment before picking up the soft blue creature. After giving it a light squeeze that leaves her with an unexpected feeling of comfort, she tucks it gently into her pack before walking once more to the door and reaching resolutely for the doorknob.

Until she gets a few more answers, there isn’t much she can do for the unknown child who lived here. But she can try her best to see their offering into the right hands.

_I hope you’re all right, little one._

_If I find the Captain, I’ll pass your gift along._


	4. The Green

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for all your lovely comments on the first three chapters! :) This first update took waaay longer than I'm intending to leave between future updates, thanks to a cluster of minor life snafus torpedoing my writing time. I'll be updating a bit more promptly from now on, though I do know better than to commit to an actual schedule ;)
> 
> This is the first chapter with a chapter-specific content warning (let me know if you'd would prefer a different way to do the whole cw's-without-spoilers thing!) I'll sandwich it between three asterisks above and below so that you can sorta blur your eyes and scroll past it if you don't want to see.  
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> content warning: drowning  
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The door from the forest opens into another short, nondescript hall.

She folds her arms, eyes narrowed, staring it down for several moments before walking back into the forest. Straining, she drags a fallen log toward the hallway. She has to stop several times to wipe the sweat that drips into her eyes, and her palms sting from gripping the rough wood, but after the log is in position, she smiles grimly, settling her hands on her hips and surveying the new and improved setup with satisfaction. The log sticks through the doorway, preventing the door from closing, just as her erstwhile rock doorstop did back at the garden. But this log sticks a good meter to the right of the door into the hall, and several meters more back into the forest behind it. No wind is going to knock this doorstop out of the way.

Striding forward, she opens the second door with relative confidence, at which point many things happen very quickly.

As the door opens the first crack, for a frozen fraction of a second she sees light, and a solid view, top to bottom, of pure translucent green. Then the green pours onto her.

A gelatinous fluid is flooding into the vacuum of the white hallway, liquid enough that is fills the space in mere seconds, thick enough to feel like slime against her face and chest and arms. There is barely time to grab a lungful of air before the fluid has filled the space, and she is under.

The force of the fluid has pressed her against the door from the forest, and she scrambles blindly backwards, reaching for the space between doorframe and door, held open by the log. Except it isn't held open. The log is gone, and the door is shut.

It couldn't have shut. It couldn't have shut. _It couldn't have shut._

_The oncoming fluid would only have pushed the hallway end of the log toward the wall, torquing the log more firmly into place--_

Crushed against the door, she scrabbles desperately above her for the handle. Yanking it down, she braces her other hand on the doorframe, and pulls at the door.

Locked.

Her chest is starting to ache. She pulls on the knob again, more slowly and carefully; when that yields no results, she rattles the knob, fingers slippery on the slimy metal. Nothing. Her chest is starting to burn, deep parts of her brain screaming for air. She turns and braces her hands and feet against the door, pushing off into the fluid. _No way to go but forward._ Her momentum carries her almost to the second door, and she paddles furiously through the doorway and out into the unknown space beyond. _Air there. Air there. Please._

She sees green, green all around her and a darker green mass a half dozen meters ahead of her. She looks up—the direction she is fairly certain is up—and sees no recognizable surface, just more of the same green. Desperately, she looks around for a door, a window, a goddam air bubble, but there is nothing.

Furiously, she pushes her way forward, squinting into the blurry view ahead. Her lungs are fire. Her lungs are burning. Her vision is darkening and she is floating a little way above herself, thinking of what words she would use to describe this sensation to someone. Fire is not sufficiently accurate. The sun is in her chest, a burning beyond burning and a pain beyond pain, and she must hold it. _Don't breathe. Don't breathe. Push on through._ She can see nothing now. She feels weightless, and the fire is burning her away from the inside out. _Don't--_

She is barely aware of the bubbles gliding over her face through the gel, her own air caressing her as it floats away. Her chest expands again, pulling the fluid into her, and the last thing she can think is, _It tastes green._

 

Consciousness fades back in slowly, with the languidness of a lazy morning. She is floating, halfway between awareness and sleep, her limbs cradled and supported, comfortable and utterly relaxed. Eyes still closed, she casts her mind back gently, waiting to be awake enough to realize where she is. _Home,_ whispers a small voice in the back of her mind. _I must be home._

It might be one minute or ten before she rouses from the deep, comfortable doze enough to open her eyes, at which point the shock of her true surroundings has her completely and instantly awake.

She _is_ floating.

Literally.

She is exactly where she was when she lost consciousness: suspended in viscous gel, but now--

_Now I can breathe._

She gulps air in and out, staring at her surroundings in abject confusion. She is floating facedown, limbs spread like a drowned woman. The gelatinous fluid supports her without pinning her in place when she tries to move, pulling a hand through the gel to her mouth. She presses her fingers to her lips, wondering if the fluid is suddenly turning to air as it enters her mouth and nose. But when she sticks her fingers into her mouth, they tell her that it is full of gel as surely as her mouth and tongue and lungs tell her that it is full of air.

She closes her eyes, shaking her head to clear it.

 _Am I dead? Did I drown and this is...this is the universe’s strangest possible goddam afterlife?_ No. That isn't possible. Or, at least, very, _very_ unlikely. _Am I dreaming, then, or drugged?_ But this whole escapade has been detailed down to the last speck of dirt and cloud in the sky, in a way that dreams, drug-induced or otherwise, never are.

 _Or..._ her eyes widen, the pieces all falling into place. The way she didn't smell smoke standing on the garden side of the wall, mere meters away from the smoldering ruin on the other side. The late afternoon sun plainly visible in the forest a few minutes after night was falling a three-minute walk away. The open-air house that had never been touched by rain, its twisted root archways as supernaturally perfect as fairy doors. The way that damn log was impossibly, _impossibly_ pushed away by fluid that should have torqued it more firmly into place. The fact that she is surrounded by viscous fluid, and can breathe.

 _This is a simulation._ _All of it._

She wraps her arms around herself, unconsciously rubbing a gentle rhythm on her own slimy shoulders. _This is a simulation. Okay. That doesn’t change much. You still need to figure out who you are--or were--and what the letters on your arms mean. You still need to keep going and keep analyzing and keep thinking until you find some answers._

Uncurling, she gazes once more at her surroundings.

The green haze around her is permeated by light; she cannot see further than ten meters in each direction, but she can make out vague shapes further away than that. By far the largest mass is the one directly in front of her. She swims her way towards it, noting with surprise the way the gel, which had seemed almost solid, holding her in place, becomes much more fluid as soon as she is in motion.

She arrives at the mass, examining it more closely. It is several times higher and broader than she is, dark green, but just translucent enough to see an even darker, opaque mass held inside it.

Reaching out, she touches it, intending only to get a read on the texture of the unknown object. But as she touches the mass, everything around her shimmers, and—changes.

She is floating in an entirely different--in an _almost_ entirely different environment. The gel has vanished, no longer green and distorting objects in the distance, yet she is still held suspended in the center of...whatever this is. And whatever this space is, the vague forms within it have resolved into crisp, multi-colored structures, clearly detailed and delineated from the space around them.

“Well,” she murmurs under her breath, “this is...interesting.”

Though she doesn't recall if she's been here before, she can't shake the feeling that her surroundings are familiar. Blinking, she turns back to the central mass, now smooth and distinct and bright fuchsia. Reaching out a hesitant hand, she touches it, wondering if her touch will change the environs back to the way they were before.

It does not.

Instead of brushing lightly, she tries poking fuchsia mass sharply with one finger, and nearly jumps out of skin when the form lights up and a cool, automated voice fills the space.

“The nucleus is the central organelle of the plant cell. It directs the cell’s processes and stores genetic information.”

The light in the fuschia nucleus blinks off, and one of the more distant shapes lights up in turn.

“The mitochondria is the warp core of the cell. It creates the energy the plant cell needs to survive.”

With no warning, she feels as though the top of her head is lifting off, and a million lights are blinking on inside her, as well.

_I knew that._

_I know...I know all of this._

“The ribosomes produce proteins. They are found in both plant and animal cells.”

 _This is what I did. This is what I_ am _. I am a scientist. I studied the universe around me._

As the ribosomes blink off, the gel around her is suffused with light. _“_ The cytosol is the fluid within the cell wall. It behaves like a solid when surrounding a stationary organelle, but has liquid properties around cell components in motion.”

_I remember._

As though a floodgate has been opened directly into her brain, knowledge is rebounding inside her, causing her to almost cry out at the overwhelming sensation of understanding, of _knowing_. Her head swims and she blinks, shaking her head as though she can physically settle the knowledge into her brain. The cell’s organelles continue lighting up and announcing their functions, but she already knows what each one is. She is familiar with all this and more. She leans hungrily into the returning knowledge, the returning memory of thousands of years of advances in technology, of her own studies, from grade school to advanced research in biochemistry and astrophysics and engineering. Her previously-lost knowledge is flooding back into her, restoring some crucial part of herself. Once again, she knows the scientific method, through which scientists and artists and mathematicians and explorers and engineers and writers and doctors and dreamers have stood on each others' shoulders and with each generation, understood more about the vastness of their universe. She remembers calculus, the mathematics of change, the beating heart of how her species understands everything from the rates and processes of the cell around her to the stars she gazed at from the simulated observatory.

For the first time since she found herself walking through the garden, she feels...centered. Competent. Ready to take on what lies ahead without fearing that she is not good enough, that she is not anything; that she is a hollow facsimile of a person; that she is too little, too late.

She knows what she _is_ , down to the cellular level, then the molecular, and finally the atomic. _Atomic, from the ancient Greek for that which cannot be divided, but they were wrong, even atoms are made of subatomic particles, subatomic particles made of quarks, all of it passed into me from my mother's body as I grew in her womb, and before that—long before that—_

Tears do come to her eyes again as she remembers. Iron and carbon and nitrogen. Formed in the heart of a star.

She smiles, bowing her head, and her tears bleed out into the simulated cytosol around her.

 

This...environment?...unlike the others, wears its true nature on its sleeve. It was quite clearly created as a...what? A teaching simulacrum of some sort, meant for showing someone the interior of a cell up close. Whatever learner it was—is?—intended for would doubtless be familiar with the true nature of their surroundings, aware that they could breathe through the simulated gel, even as it was designed to feel like liquid against their skin. _Wonder if I knew that, once._

There is still so much she doesn't remember. Her history. Her identity. How she came to be trapped in this place, and how—she glances in panic at her arms, relieved to see that, though slightly faded by their cytosol bath, the letters are still there—she will find out the truth about ‘them,’ locate the vanished child, and get herself out of here and back to reality.

But now, at least, she knows what she is, in more ways than one.

_I am a scientist._

_I am an engineer._

_I am an adult homo sapiens, composed of organs, cells, molecules, and atoms, drawn together from across the galaxy._

There is a trapdoor in the bottom of the cell, circular but otherwise similar in construction to the doors between each of the other environments. She swims her way toward it, grasping the handle and lifting. Brilliant light shines from the other side, and, squinting into the brightness, she sees...sand?

Before making the leap into the next environment, she glances gratefully back at the model cell, silently thanking it for all it has returned to her.

_I may not yet know who I am—was. But I do know what I am made of._

_I am made of stars._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: Cytosol having properties which allow it to act like a solid around certain elements of the cell and a liquid elsewhere/at the same time is just one current theory about how cells work (thank you, Wikipedia). So, I went with that, but it's science fiction rather than 100% certain real-life science ;)


	5. The Desert

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning in the middle of the six lines of stars...  
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> Content warning: Mention of disordered eating/weight/weight loss  
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She drops lightly down from the portal onto golden sand, shimmering with heat and stretching as far as the eye can see, broken up occasionally by rock formations. Above her, the desert is capped by a hazy yellow-orange sky.

She glances back up at the portal that transported her here, or tries to. The trapdoor is simply gone; there is nothing in the sky above her, just open air and desert as far as the eye can see.

Well, if there'd been any doubt...

She reaches down, intending to let a small handful of hot sand run through her fingers. Instead, it sticks to the layer of wet cytosol coating her skin, and she ends up irately attempting to wipe the gooey granules off on her pants. Once again, she marvels at the reality of this simulation. _Who in the hell programmed this?_

She frowns, a question that had not yet had time to rise to the forefront of her mind finally demanding her attention.

_If this..._

She spins in a slow circle, staring out into the desert landscape around her.

_All of this...and what came before...is a simulation..._

_Am I, myself, my real body, trapped in a simulation that is running in a real space, in real time?_

_Or do I have a real body, a physical body, elsewhere and this..._ She looks down over herself: the cytosol crusting on her shirt; the lettering on her forearms and the burns and scratches on her palms. _This body, this form, is just another part of the simulation? A simulation that could be running invisibly in the code of a computer, without any manifestation in reality?_

Well, there’s only one way to find out, and that’s to continue pushing forward, to keep asking questions and finding the answers to them. She reaches back absentmindedly to touch the knapsack holding the child’s gift to ‘the Captain.’ _I’ll figure this mess out, little one. Promise._

As she glances to the left, an odd feeling comes over her, as alien as the sensation of thirst when she first...came to be...in the garden. As such, it takes her a moment to realize what the feeling is.

She _recognizes_ this place.

Turning slowly, her heart in her throat, she walks toward the sweeping dune to her left. If the vague, faint visual memory is correct, over that rise, there will be a formation of flat orange rocks surrounded by weathered natural rock columns. Two on the left, five on the right.

As she crests the dune, her breath catches.

The formation is there.

This desert--or rather, the desert this facsimile is based on--is real. And she has been here before. _Unless whatever placed you in this simulation messed with your mind, that is,_ a nagging voice reminds her.

She walks slowly towards the formation at the foot of the rise, then chides herself for her caution and increases her speed, glancing down at the words on her arms. _Or they die._ Approaching the formation, she can make out the strata of the orange stone, and spot two flat rocks, cleared of sand, right in the center of the formation, and--

She _remembers_ , the memory coming to her just the same as any of her memories of her time in the garden, the inferno, the forest, or the cell. It's just—a memory, or a snatch of one. But it is from _before._

 

“You know, when I was young and my mother wanted to have a long talk about a thorny subject, she'd wait until we were in a vehicle or a waiting area or somewhere else where I couldn't wriggle away.”

She was kneeling on a cushion on one of the flat central stones, facing towards the horizon past the stone columns, hands folded loosely in her lap. She added with a half-smirk, “But I have to say, this tops anything she ever came up with.”

“Indeed.” The man sitting beside her glanced at her, raising a dour eyebrow, then turned his own face back to the horizon. “We are not here to converse, Commander. We are here to meditate.”

“Right.” In spite of herself, she smiled, glancing fondly to her companion. “We hiked two kilometers away from your house, out into the Vulcan desert, with no one to talk to but each other, to meditate.”

“Yes. As I told you when I suggested this walk, I wished to show you a place where I have spent many hours, in times of peace and in times of turmoil, for as long as my family has resided in our current home.”

“Right. Let’s meditate, then.” She closed her eyes.

“You do not have to close your eyes, Commander. Although,” he added, with the faintest hint of tartness, “if you wish to sleep rather than meditate, I believe your body might appreciate the rest after what it has endured these past few weeks.”

“Knew it,” she muttered.

“I am merely,” her companion said calmly, “making an observation.”

 

The rocks are just as she remembers them.

Shivering despite the heat, she makes her way to the center of the formation, lowering herself gingerly to kneel on the hard stone.

Why is she remembering part her life before the garden _now?_ Why did she forget her goddam former life in the first place? Is this memory being stirred by this location, and does that mean that she has never been in the locations represented by the previous environments in the simulation? Is this the beginning of the restoration of her memory, or will she have to content herself with this scrap?

Even that will be more--so much more--than what she had until now.

 

The faint memory picks up some time later. They had argued, she remembers that much. Now they sat facing towards each other, drinking water from portable flasks. Her heartbeat was elevated, emotions running high.

Though her companion’s face and voice remained calm, his dark eyes stared into hers with profound intensity. “But what happens to _you_ now, Commander? What will you do tomorrow? What will you do next week? What will you do next year?”

“I don't follow.” She wasn't lying; current ignorance of the conversation’s context aside, in the memory, her past self genuinely had lost the thread of his point.

“You are telling me that you inadvertently caused harm to people for whom you feel responsible, and then attempted to make amends for that harm by risking your life to complete their survey.”

“I didn't want them to think their suffering, everything they've lost, was all in vain.”

“Indeed. So you completed the survey. You spoke with the injured crew and their families, conducting yourself with exemplary professionalism and compassion. You fulfilled your only true obligation, as well as the dangerous one you took upon yourself.”

She stared at him, waiting.

“It has been five weeks since that incident.”

“And?”

“Your body is visibly exhausted, malnourished, and dehydrated.”

“It's been a busy few--”

“You have been avoiding food and rest for the past four days you have spent on leave with my family and I, in a peaceful environment with few responsibilities.”

“Now you're making things up; I've eaten with you all every day--”

“Last night, T'Pel shared with me her concern that you are not consuming the calories necessary for an adult human--”

“T'Pel is a mother, of course she wants everyone in her orbit to stuff themselves with vegetables--”

“My daughter is not a parent, and she asked if you were ill--”

“Did you talk about anything except me after I went to bed last night?” she snapped. Her companion looked steadily at her without responding, the volley of conversation finally stilled. “And,” she added, feeling like a cross child but unable to stop herself, “dehydration isn't 'visible.'”

“Perhaps not to humans.”

She scowled, then broke, cracking a lopsided smile at her companion.

He looked at her, not quite doing anything as pointed as directing his gaze at her body, while still somehow drawing their mutual attention to it.

Her gaze fell to her own torso and lap, hands folded tidily on top of her knees.

 

She blinks her way back to reality-- _'reality,' ha; the present moment, let's leave it at that_ \--and repeats her past self's downward glance. She has to agree with her own former words; compared to her current body, the supposed malnourishment of her past self is practically plump. She would hardly consider herself overly thin now, either. _I look...normal. Well. I think._

The analysis is swept away by an immense, thundering realization. Her body, her physical form, matches her body, her real body, in the memory. She isn’t secretly a tentacled being or an elderly woman or a bodiless AI. _Whether this is me-me or simulated-me, this_ is _what I look like._ She feels a surprising rush of relief that the rug threatening to be yanked out from under her growing understand of herself is, after all, still firmly in place.

No matter how comforting the confirmation of her appearance is, it only brings back the original question. _Is this simulation physical? Or is it all just a simulation on some computer somewhere, including…_ She stares at her arms, marked with a dire warning, at her knees, at her gel-soaked clothes. _This?_

 

“You could have been killed.”

“Either of us could be killed any day of the week.”

He reached out, laying his hand on the stone next to hers. “Not like that.”

 

When she drowned, it reset. If this is her real body, that would have taken a miracle. Or perhaps she passed out but did not, in fact, die or close to it, since the gel was really air and she'd begun breathing again. That would be possible. But...no. She lifts a hand, swallowing as she runs her fingers along the outside of her throat. Holding her breath to the point of unconsciousness would have left its mark—swollen or burst blood vessels, lingering chest pain at the least. When she woke floating in cytosol, there was no pain, no discoloration of fingers or nails, no blurred vision; she felt as she had before she'd left the forest.

 _So, something...fixed me. Not when I scraped my shins or burned my hands, but when I died or came close...then I got…_ She purses her lips, wrapping her arms around herself again despite the heat. _Reset._

That, she decides, leaves two options. Either she was unconscious for long enough that someone or something grabbed her, sedated her, used sufficiently advanced medical technology to heal any damage from the near-drowning while leaving the rest of her minor cuts and burns exactly as they had been, and placed her back into the plant cell simulation...or this body that her consciousness currently resides in is as simulated as the environment around it.

Given the improbability of the first option, she has to tentatively conclude that she is, indeed, not she. Or at least, her body isn't.

She picks up a handful of sand, letting it run through her simulated fingers and willing her simulated surroundings to stir more of the hopefully-non-simulated memory.

 

“What's your point?”

“You say your dangerous return journey was about your crewmates, atoning for the harm they came to during the ordinary course of all of your duties.”

She sighed, feeling drained and worn. “Yes.”

“What happens after your atonement?”

“I don't follow.”

“What,” he asked, voice intense yet measured, “are you doing now?”

 _I'm sitting in the middle of a desert with you, because you wanted to corner me and be disapproving but inscrutable._ She settled on the less sarcastic, “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

He didn't dignify that answer with a response. “If your...difficulty with this event was truly centered around what happened to your crewmates, you would have supported the survivors and their families, grieved, perhaps struggled with guilt and anger with yourself, spoken to the ship's counselor, and begun to move on.”

“What, exactly, are you saying, Tuvok? That I don't care about the survivors?”

“That is, indeed, what I am saying. In a manner of speaking.”

She threw her hands in the air, making a sound of disgust and fixing her gaze pointedly off into the horizon.

“It is obviously that you care deeply about the survivors of the accident, yet for the last few weeks, you have been persistently negligent.”

“How, Tuvok? How have I been negligent? You’re saying I’m so bent out of shape that I missed something? Does someone need help we haven’t given? If you’ve seen that someone needs something I missed, I swear I will transport off this rock this very hour hour and do whatever it takes to--”

He gave her a hard, and very slightly smug, look.

She stared at him for a moment before it clicked. Then she groaned again, resting her palm in her hand, but this time she was barely holding back her laughter.

“That was _very_ dirty.”

“I merely stated the facts of the situation.”

“You always do. All right, you’ve made the point you dragged me out here to make, and it’s getting late. We should head back to the house.”

Still smiling, she tossed back the last of her water and stood, only to find his hand on her arm as the world swirled and darkened. It took her a few seconds for her vision to clear and her legs to fully support her again.

“Oh, don’t give me that look. You already won this round. Come on, let’s go home. You can even feed me vegetables.”

 

Day is beginning to fade, just as it was at the end of the memory. She looks to her left, where her companion-- _Tuvok-_ -had sat, and reaches out, as though her touch could summon him into the present.

Though, of course, he never actually sat _here_. None of this is real. She glances down at her own hand. _And neither am I_.

The knowledge that her real body is elsewhere, and she has no idea where that elsewhere might be, is both unsettling and familiar, surreally close to the feeling of having accidentally left behind one's purse or some equally omnipresent article, and feeling just slightly less than whole or prepared to face the day without it.

She laughs. _Forgot my purse. Forgot my lipstick. Forgot my body._

 _You're in shock,_ she thinks distantly. That's funny too, and she giggles again, tears running down her face as she dissolves into helpless laughter.

 

There is a familiar-looking trapdoor in the sand at the bottom of the next rise, metal glinting in the fading light. As she walks toward it, she thinks about her past self--and she _was_ a self, a whole person, sarcastic and affectionate and self-possessed. She purses her lips, heart sinking as she remembers the conversation, the way Tuvok implied that she was worn and grieving and lost. Compared to what she is now, this past her crackles with life and self.

A thought rises, corrosive and ugly, before she can tamp it back down. If he was disappointed in what she’d let happen to her then, what would he think if he saw her now?

_Oh, hush. He wasn’t angry at you--not that kind of angry, anyway. It couldn’t be plainer that he was angry because he cared._

Once upon a time, someone thought her worthy of love and care. Once upon a time, she had a...friend? brother? classmate? colleague? who she valued, and who valued her in turn. Once upon a time, she had a memory and an identity and a self to do that valuing.

For the first time, anger stirs within her, not only at the unknown cause of the warning on her arms, or the ominous fate of the child in the forest, but at her own loss, and what has been taken from her.

 

The slight wound on her lower leg itches as she approaches the trapdoor, and she seizes on the more practical puzzles of her situation, pushing the memory and all that came with it from her mind for the moment.

It’s easier that way.

_I have a minor injury of unknown provenance, and that never reset._

_I was filthy with ash when I first...arrived?...in the garden and I'm covered with gel from that last environment now, and that never reset._

_I have scratches on my shins and burns on my palms from making my way through the ruin, and that never reset._

_I drowned—or suffocated myself, more accurately—because I didn't know how to handle the plant cell environment. And that...now,_ that _reset._

Arriving at the trapdoor, she reaches for the handle without thinking, and jerks her hand back, crying out involuntarily as the sun-soaked metal scorches her bare skin. Her body curls involuntarily around her hand, and she gasps for several moments until her mind reasserts itself. Slowly, she relaxes and straightens up, breathing deeply against the stinging pain.

 _Hurt her, but don't kill her._ She smiles grimly. _So that's your game._

She yanks off her tank top, still saturated with damp cytosol that is beginning to crust at the edges as it dries, and reaches for the door again, shirt wrapped around her hand. As she heaves the heavy portal open, she smiles again, a smile with teeth.

_Just a couple of questions, then, my friend. Why you are holding me here?_

_And what, exactly, are you keeping me alive for?_


	6. The City

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) It's baaack! Apologies for the long time between updates, and thanks again to everyone who has commented on, bookmarked, and supported this WIP. I hugely appreciate it! <3  
> 2) I previously promised monthly updates, which seemed like a modest but attainable goal at the time. Not so much, it turns out. In part, this was hubris. In part, it was because when I first started this fic, I planned for each chapter to be ~1,000 words, and instead they seem to be clocking in at 2,000 - 5,000+ each...so hey, at least there’s more bang for your buck/wait. ;) My life is pretty challenging and chaotic right now, so going forward, I’m not going to promise a specific time scheme...BUT I can say with absolute confidence that I’m going to finish this guy! Everything’s outlined, and I’ve been thinking of it daily and working on it fairly consistently a bit at a time...just without having/making much time.  
> 3) Side note--I finalized the outline and chapter names (also part of the delay...I keep getting suckered into writing and revising parts of the final chapters, rather than what actually comes next. ;) Rather than the original fifteen, there will be sixteen chapters and an epilogue!  
> 4) To revisit my note from a few chapters ago (since it’s uh been a while), chapter-specific content warnings will be nested within asterisks so you can skip over them if you want to avoid possible spoilers. (And again: the No Archive Warnings Apply remains true throughout. This doesn’t mean there won’t be some real #Angst later on, though… ;)  
> 5) I'm posting this chapter and the next at the same time because they go together in my posting schedule, but the end of this 4.5k word behemoth makes a good “stopping point,” for those who desire such a thing. :)  
> *  
> *  
> *  
> content warnings: Maybe a very mild horror vibe? (I am NOT a horror movie person myself, so nothing I write will be *that* horror-esque.) But heads up, if subtly not-quite-human entities creep you out.  
> Also, food.  
> *  
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> *

The burning door opens into paradise.

Before her lies a long, empty city street under a hazy blue sky. The sun is a bright point shining through the wispy cloud cover, and the breeze is cold enough to raise goosebumps on her arms, a welcome relief after the burning heat of the desert.

She steps forward, and is unsurprised to see that the portal from the desert has vanished into thin air as soon as she glances back around at it again. The street is lined with buildings, storefronts sporting gaily-colored awnings, clear picture windows, and signs in a multitude of languages, some of which she finds she understands, some of which she does not. There are, unsurprisingly, no people in sight. But the street is simply too cheerful and welcoming for the emptiness, incongruous thought it may be, to feel disconcerting. It feels, she reflects, more like a pleasant dream: inconsistent with reality, yet not unsettlingly so. Peering into the distance, she can see, perhaps a half-kilometer away, the shoreline where the ocean borders the city, and beyond that, the line where the the sea meets the gauzy blue of the sky.

And...yes. Yes. As with the desert, she remembers this place. Not this particular street, perhaps, but there is an easy, undeniable familiarity to the slant of the sunlight, the colorful buildings, the way the land curves along the edge of the the sparkling azure sea.

She closes her eyes, inhaling the scents of greenery and cooking grease and flowers, before opening them and striding happily forward.

Reaching the end of the street, she finds a busy intersection, or at least, what evidently would be one were it populated; footprints track across the edge of a plot of dirt holding a small tree, and a bank of bicycles stands in the shade of a building on the corner. On the opposite corner, a bright sign at the head of an underground set of stairs proclaims “Trans Francisco” and she grins. She can picture this place filled with bustling crowds, a vision half-imagination and half-memory: people walking to work, to shop, to school. The image is a pleasant one. She wonders what she will find if she keeps walking. Does this city have parks? Gardens? Perhaps beaches, down by the edge of the sea?

Admittedly, it might be colder there--now that her relief at leaving the heat of the desert has faded, the wind is uncomfortably cold--but nonetheless, she keeps walking straight at the intersection, heading downhill towards the water. The buildings are growing taller, all stone and colored glass, and she smiles around at them, running a hand through her hair as she steps into and out of the long patches of sunlight between their shadows.

Shivering, she wishes fleetingly for a jacket before remembering the mildewy sweaters from the observatory. Unslinging the pack from her back, she pulls one of them out; the tin cup comes with it, clattering onto the road. Replacing it in the pack, she feels her stomach grow cold at the sight of the blue stuffed creature. Somehow, unbelievably, she’d nearly forgotten about it and its foreboding provenance. She swings the pack back over her shoulders, glancing at the fading letters on her forearm as she does so.

     WT YEL YEL PURP WT YEL RED WT GRN  
     OR THEY DIE

As they have each time she has read them, the three final stark words send a glimmer of fear and a thrill of anger twisting through her, and when she looks around once again at the beautiful scenery, she finds that she no longer enjoys the sight as she did before the chilling reminder of her journey’s unknown--half-known--stakes.

      FOR VOYAGER  
      FOR NAOMI

_This isn’t a vacation. This is a mission. Move your ass._

She begins to walk again, this time more quickly. There is not, yet, a defined goal in her mind, beyond learning as much as she can about the situation in which she has found herself. _The more ground I can cover, the greater the chance I find something that can help._ Preoccupied with her thoughts, she is several steps down the street after the next turn before she takes in what is in front of her.

There is a person walking up the street. A woman, she thinks, with gray hair and a multi-colored cardigan, strolling up the street from the other direction, growing closer to her with each step, as though this is a real and ordinary street in a real and ordinary town.

A person. A real human person. Not in memory, but in front of her. A lump of emotion rising in her throat, she continues on her path. The woman keeps walking as well, giving no sign that another being’s appearance here is unusual to her, or that she is doing anything more interesting than making an ordinary trek from one point to another that happens to take her down this particular street, until finally, they are within speaking distance.

“Hello there.” Her voice feels rusty from lack of use. Aside from swearing at the simulation and its unknown keepers a few times, she hasn’t used it in...well. In as far back as her current memory goes.

The woman turns to face her as she approaches, and for the first time, she sees her eyes.

They are blank, empty, and colorless; pools of dull silver nothingness in an otherwise human face. She feels herself startle internally, but tells herself to keep calm. There’s nothing inherently dangerous or menacing about a being with unusual eyes, even if certain parts of her subconscious are screaming otherwise.

Forcing her voice to stay steady and cheerful, she continues, “How are you? Beautiful day for a walk.”

The woman regards her for a long moment before she speaks. “This is not your place.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“This is not your place.” After another moment of eye contact, the woman breaks her gaze, turning to continue on her original path.

“I’m--I’m sorry, ma’am, but I don’t understand.” She changes course, backtracking to follow the woman as she continues on her trajectory up the street. “I’m--” She can’t exactly introduce herself without knowing her own name. “I’m...lost here, and I’d be deeply grateful for any information you could give me about where we are.”

The woman keeps walking.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry to bother you, but if you could clarify what you meant when you said that this is not my place, I’d truly appreciate it.” She is walking alongside her now, trying both to keep her voice friendly and non-threatening, and not show her own uneasiness. The woman ignores her.

“Ma’am?” For a moment, she wonders if the woman can hear her, or see her, at all. Then she turns back toward her.

“This is not your place.”

Her voice is absolutely flat and even.

“Are you part of this...simulation?”

“This is not your place.”

“Can you understand what I’m saying?”

“This is his place. Not yours.”

His place.

“Whose place?”

The woman ignores her.

“When you said this is his place...do you mean this street? Or this city? Or this whole…” If this is a simulation--and that’s still, technically, an _if_ \--would this woman know that? “...reality?”

“This is not your place.”

The woman’s voice, finally, changes slightly; though still flat and neutral, these last words seem a bit more emphatic, with an undercurrent of command.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry if I’ve done something I wasn’t supposed to do. I didn’t intend to break any rules, or go against anyone’s wishes.”

But that isn’t exactly true, she has to admit to herself a moment later. She saw a door saying ‘Do Not Enter,’ and she cursed it out and entered anyway.

True or untrue, the woman ignores her again.

“Ma’am?”

Nothing. The woman’s face stays neutral and her expression unchanging, save for a blink of her empty silver eyes.

“Have a nice day,” she says weakly, finally breaking step and coming to a stop in the middle of the street. The woman walks onwards, not acknowledging her absence any more than she had her presence.

For a moment, she stands still, regaining her bearings. That person...was either a part of the simulation, or pretending to be. But she is leaning heavily toward the former, thinking of her empty eyes.

She shivers again, despite the wool sweater. There is something deeply disconcerting about someone who is almost-human, but just slightly, clearly not. When she first entered the city, she had mentally compared it to a pleasant dream, clearly unreal yet not unsettlingly so. Her encounter with the eyeless woman is also like a dream--not a pleasant one, nor a screaming nightmare, but the kind of icey-fingered,  _wrong_ dream that lingers in one's mind long after waking.

Shaking herself mentally, she begins walking again, in the direction she had been going before she backtracked to follow the visitor. She has made it another three blocks, onto a street with somewhat taller buildings, when she sees movement out of the corner of her eye. In the storefront directly to her right, someone is moving. She stops, staring through the picture window at the first shopkeeper she’s seen, puttering with the drink machinery behind the counter of his establishment.

Not only that, the brightly painted door to the bakery is propped wide open.

The smell of warm, buttery baked goods drifts through.

She hasn’t felt hungry since she first...since the garden, and hasn’t thought of food or felt weak or shaky at its absence-- _chalk another one up for evidence that I, and this, are all a simulation, if we’re still counting._ Simulation or not, however, it smells wonderful. She steps in the doorway.

The cafe is as bright inside as out, with a tantalizing display of baked goods under a glass case and a chalkboard behind the counter offering, somewhat puzzlingly, only one drink: _Vulcan Mocha, extra sweet. Size S, M, L._

The man turns toward her as she walks toward the counter, and she sees his blank silver eyes.

“Good morning,” she musters. “I don’t suppose I could order a pastry?”

“This is his place. Not yours.”

She sighs. “Right. So that’s a no on the pastry?”

“Not yours,” the man, the simulation, repeats.

Well, all right then.

She turns to leave, thinking absently that the cafe must struggle for patrons, because there’s only one person she knows with that drink order and that’s--

Harry.

Harry. Harry Kim. _Harry._

She stands stock-still in the doorway. The memory of him feels as though it has been sloshed into her skull with the weight and suddenness of a bucket of water.

Harry Kim, spruced and sprigged, anxious, young, now not so young, covered in grease and dirt and blood, no, that was another time, now older, still tidy and spruce but angry. Angry at her. And then calm and resolute, and then happy, and then carrying her, dragging her to safety--no, that was another time, earlier--she shakes her head--Harry, dark eyes full of laughing and determination and hope, black and gold, a uniform, a plate of food, chairs and a table, laughing with his friends, Harry, lying unconscious and scarred on a hard medical bed, Harry, raising his voice as he argues with her, Harry Kim Harry Harry _Harry--_

Closing her eyes, she breathes slowly in and out as the memories settle into her mind, images and feelings and words absorbing back into her consciousness like water sinking into the cracks between stones. There is no need to tell herself a linear narrative about who Harry was, or how she knew him. She simply _remembers_ , with all the detail and certainty of an ordinary memory.

But only him, and frustration dogs her mind as she picks over the memories of Harry, grasping desperately for the context that lurks at their edges. Harry Kim, her...crewmember. _Yes. A member of my crew._ Crew of what? A ship? Her colleague. Her subordinate, her protege. She thinks of how young he was when they first met; how he’s grown through the years. The incompleteness of the memory haunts her; she can remember looking at him with pride as he saved lives, _saved our lives, saved_ my _life,_ during terrible situations, but she can’t remember quite what any of the terrible situations were.

But her memory...the simulation... _whatever_ it is that controls what she knows and what she does not know...at least it is giving her back _people_.

She can remember a dark-haired woman, not entirely human, laughing at Harry’s side.

She can remember a man with a tattoo curling across his brow, grinning at her, arguing with her, bleeding after a fight, reading text on a screen, laughing and joking with his friends.

She can remember her father, leaning over to tuck her into bed when she was still small enough to ask him to kiss her stuffed animals goodnight.

She can remember a dog, with silky fur the color of amber, curling against her on the sofa and snoring softly as she turned the page of her book.

And she can remember--truly _remember_ , not just rediscover one memory of from the outside in--Tuvok. His steady voice, his love of puzzles and games, his hands on her arms as she knelt distraught on the floor, their conversations.

She looks down at her arm again, and she knows. She knows.

The people filing their way back into her memory banks--some of them, anyway--are the _they_ the inked letters are warning her she needs to save. More snatches of memory are flooding her now; recent memories of terror and fury and determination. A snatch of a man’s voice (what man? Tom Paris, sandy-haired and stormy-eyed, his mouth in a hard line instead of his usual lazy grin), his hand gripping her shoulder as she also grips his.

_I’ll take care of her. You go for the rest._

_Do it. And Tom--thank you._

Another snatch of memory. Standing surrounded by darkness, the light of a fire glimmering off an arc of metal over a woman’s brow. _Seven_. Seven’s voice, cool and calm, with only a hint of a tremor: _Yes. I believe this plan will work._ And she, in her memory’s eye, laying a reassuring hand on Seven’s arm. _It will._

And another. Breathing hard, exhaustion, growing fear kept grimly in check. Listening to another woman’s voice, quick and urgent and scared. _It’s not going to work, Captain, it’s too late to--_

Blinking her eyes open, she shakes her head to clear it. The memories are pouring in, full-body memories, the feeling of pain, the smells, the sounds. Yet there are still so many gaps, far more sprawling than what she has regained. She remembers people, yes, but the barest glimpses of context, places, her own identity. Frustration dogs her. _Who_ was _I?_ How _did I know them? How..._

There is a glimmer, in the background of her memory. Standing at attention, taking orders, giving orders. Running down corridors alongside the people she is finally beginning to remember, smoke and sparks surrounding them as they ran towards danger for the good of the--

For the good of the ship. A ship. Yes. She shakes her head again, the inrush of memories almost physically painful. A ship, but not a ship on the sea, a ship floating, orbiting, _flying_ \--

 _A starship._ One memory comes to her, crystal clear. The ship, _their_ ship, sleek and gray, still in the final stages of construction. It floats, moored in front of a panorama of stars, smaller ships--shuttles--and crews buzzing around it like bees. She is at the viewport of another shuttle, approaching, her hand pressed against the glass. She is smiling.

She opens her eyes, blinking in the sunlight, trying to take it all in.

In a ship like that, she could fly among the _stars._

Her eyes fill with tears. She looks down at her arm, remembering standing in the observatory and wondering whether Voyager could be the name of a ship, somewhere out there on that pale gray sea.

She chuckles, wiping the tears from her eyes.  _You weren’t wrong, my friend, but you weren’t right either._

_Voyager is a starship._

_Voyager is_ our _starship._

 _Because we were a crew._ That’s _who the "they" are._

 _My crew._ The words feel right, falling into place deep inside her with the perfect, well-worn fit of an old leather jacket. _We were a crew. They were my crew._ Yes. It feels right.

Despite all that is frustrating and devastating and terrifying about the current situation, a situation she is only slowly beginning to understand, she cannot help but feel a growing flame of hope in her chest. She has a crew. She has loved ones. Despite all current appearances, she is not, existentially speaking, alone.

Smiling, she keeps walking, letting her mind process all it has regained. It’s funny, now, to think of those ancient scientific instruments back in the observatory, and the way she knew in the back of her mind that they were ancient, then wondered how she knew. Well, if reality is starships, and shuttles, and simulations as advanced as this one, no wonder what remained of her mind balked at seeing a mechanical telescope as the height of technological sophistication.

And she'd thought Voyager might be a ship out there on the sea. She chuckles aloud again.

And then there was the cell, that simulation-within-a-simulation. If it felt familiar, as though she’d seen it or something like it before, such technology must be in common use in reality. In her own, real reality, somewhere outside of all this. After all, her mind had parsed the knowledge of the nature of the cell environment easily enough once it became explicitly obvious, not wasting time boggling that such a thing was possible and instead using the simulation's contents themselves to realize...to realize...

She stops walking.

She cannot remember what it was that she realized about herself in that place.

A cold terror twists somewhere deep inside her.

She cannot remember.

 _It was a cell. A plant cell. And I drowned by mistake, and then I discovered I could breathe, and then all the organelles started lighting up. Right. I remember everything that_ happened _there. But then, at the end, I realized--I realized--_

She closes her eyes, trying to summon back the memory, the knowing. She can remember everything that happened, trapped in the green of the simulation-of-a-simulation-of-a-cell. But the knowledge of herself she recovered there, the memory from what she is starting to think of as Before…

_I realized...realized…_

It is like trying to access knowledge that is simply no longer there.

_I realized...the cell...parts of the cell...I realized…_

_I realized I was a scientist! I realized that all of that, learning and discovering and labeling, was familiar because I was a scientist._

A startled sob bursts out of her, half devastation and half relief, as she crumples into herself, chest tightening as she battles a growing panic. She has misunderstood the rules of the game. She thought that what she regained, once remembered, was hers to keep. She was wrong.

She is not slowly rebuilding her memory, her understanding of this situation, of herself. She is rebuilding it as it is leached from her mind again, a sandcastle worn away as quickly as it is built by the foaming surf.

Awareness returns; without remembering getting herself into this position, she is bent double, hands braced against knees. Her breath feels tight and quick, and she closes her eyes, steadying herself.

_Don't fall to pieces._

_That's what they want. Whoever,_ whatever _is doing this to you._

_They are tearing you to pieces._

_Don't let them._

_Don't let the memories go. Don’t let yourself go. Don’t let the people you love go._

A breath, and another, eyes still shut as she solidifies her growing determination in a still, quiet place deep inside.

_Don't let any of it go._

Straightening, she takes a deep breath and unclenches her hands, then curls them again into loose and purposeful fists. “I will get back what you've taken,” she hisses under her breath as she begins once more to walk. “And by all the blood in my body and all the stars in the sky, _you will not take more._ ”

 

There is nothing for it but to keep walking.

There are no more shops with their doors standing open. She passes another few simulated humans as she walks on toward the ocean, a parent and daughter walking along half a block in front of a laughing couple walking their dog. The little girl glances silently over at her with her empty silver eyes.

Colors. She needs to figure out the significance of the colors inscribed on her arm. They are, must be, an instruction of some kind, written in her own hand; she--

She stops, as a realization--milder than the other revelations of the past half-hour she has spent in the city, but a realization nonetheless--hits her. At some point, she, her past self, her whole past self with memories and purpose and identity, knew what was happening to her here. Knew (at the very least) that she was losing her memories. She must have drawn those huge, dark marker letters to do exactly what they ultimately did: Keep her on track and on-mission, no matter how her memory-drained mind wandered, by providing instruction (whatever the hell the color-code was meant to mean), rationale (those three terrifying words beneath), and finally a reminder of exactly who and what was on the line.

Except the reminder came too late.

Had she--her former self--known that she was losing deepest identity along as well as recent memory? Had she written those words, the stark instruction and then the exhortation to fulfill it “for Voyager, for Naomi,” without realizing that this...this enemy would take away her knowledge of why those last words were significant at all? Or had she, perhaps, simply been desperate and out of options, in the midst of that now-unremembered crisis that had ended with her blank and empty in the garden by the sea? Had she known that the words would eventually mean nothing to her but hoped that she would be able to do...whatever it was that needed doing...before that happened?

She feels a pang of sympathy for her former self in either scenario, whether for her innocence or what must surely have been her helpless terror. It was bad enough, a few minutes ago, to realize she was losing what little she had regained, but the blank person she had been in the observatory is still her earliest true memory of herself. What must it have been like to possess a whole life of memories, a whole mind’s worth of identity and love and plans, and know that it was all being inexorably wiped away?

A young man is walking along the sidewalk in the opposite direction. As she passes him, deep in thought, she greets him absentmindedly, already thinking of her next steps. “‘Morning.”

The man halts, taking a step toward her out of the sunlight. In the shadow of the overhead awning, his flat silver eyes glint and darken. “This is his place. Not yours.”

“I fucking _know!_ You bastard!” She whirls, running down the street and hanging a left at the first crossroad. Panting, she is so occupied with checking to see whether the man is following her--he isn't--that she's nearly halfway up the block before she notices the sight ahead.

While the street is an ordinary one for this environment, lined with gaily colored houses and trees that rustle in the cold breeze, at the end of it, bisecting it completely from building to building, is a very familiar wall. Walking closer, her eyes confirm what her brain has already inferred: the uneven shape of the stones; their porridge color and the grey mortar holding them in place; the way the wall, as high as the three-story homes around it, juts across the street at a slight angle, extending cleanly, too cleanly, from building to building, for all the world as though it continues past the exterior of the homes through them and out the other side...a boundary wall. Another one.

The whole effect--normal wall, normal city street, yet juxtaposed in a way that could never possibly happen in reality--is subtly eerie. Still, the sight is welcome, heralding as it does the next step in the closest she has to a plan: Keep going.

She walks toward it, a feeling of inevitability settling into her bones as she glances behind her one more time to check for potential followers. She already feels a bit guilty for yelling at the young man, and has to remind herself of his flat, colorless eyes. He’s part of this place, this force, this _enemy._ And _it_...it most heartily _does_ deserve to be told to fuck off.

As she approaches the wall door and stands before it, a sort of desperate powerlessness wells up in her throat at the memory of how, no matter her efforts to bar the doors between environments, this place ( _the enemy)_ has kicked her into burning ash and choking gel exactly how it pleases, freely permitting itself to alter the simulation however it likes to keep her from going back. To try to hold this door ajar is undoubtedly fruitless, and although the thought crosses her mind, briefly, to make the attempt in an act of defiance, a kind of dull tiredness stops her. What does it matter? This place can and has done whatever it likes with her; the only defiance that really matters is to figure out how to do as her lost self’s lettering instructs and complete her mission.

Pride, dignity, ingenuity, resistance...none of that matters to this place, and as the chill breeze brushes her hair painfully back and forth across the back of her sunburned neck, it’s hard to feel as though it matters to her either.

For a moment, she finds herself longing for the simplicity of the overgrown garden and its crumbling observatory. She was lost there, yes, in every possible sense of the word, but at least she was lost enough not to mourn what she had lost. She remembers her excitement, figuring out her dominant hand as she reached for a pebble; the satisfaction at discerning a possible gender from the lace and bows on a brassiere. But all for what? She is a she, she is right-fucking-handed, and she’s still lost everything she’s ever been, or loved, or wanted, with dim to nil chance of getting it back.

She thinks of her earlier discovery of the impersistence of memory. All she needs to do is wait, and the knowledge that she's lost anything at all will once again drain quietly away.

Does it matter, really, if she loses the half-collected remnants of a person she may never again be able to be?

 _But the mission._ She shakes herself. _The mission matters._ The letters, the blue creature, the terrifyingly absent little girl. And the others, all the faces and names and _voices_ she remembers now. Gentle voices; angry voices; real, living voices. Tuvok. Tom. Seven. Harry. Real people. In some kind of danger. Waiting.

She has people, people _she loves,_ and they are counting on her.

So what if the doors have put her through, quite literally, hell and high water? She would drown again, stumble through the smoldering ash again, walk through fire if she has to, because she’s not doing it for herself. She’s doing it for them.

Reaching for the doorknob, she gulps a lungful of air, just in case, and holds it as the heavy metal door opens to her touch.

_Come hell or high water, I’ll make it through._


	7. The Train

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning in the middle of the six lines of stars...  
> *  
> *  
> *  
> Content warning: Injury; crude language  
> *  
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> *

The door opens into darkness. Not quite pitch blackness--she can see faint glimmers of light in the sky; the outlines of shapes in the distance; a sense of extending space--but after the bright noon sun on this side of the boundary wall, her eyes can barely see into the nighttime gloom on the other side. Carefully, she steps forward, holding the door open a sliver behind her. The environment seems to be cooperating, for once--she hasn’t been sucked forward into the new environment, and the door obeys the normal physics of doors--and for a moment, she hesitates, not wanting to waste the opportunity. But there was nothing more for her there. She needs to keep moving forward. She lets the door click shut behind her.

It takes several moments for her eyes to adjust, and when they finally do, she is so furious at herself that she is on the verge of screaming.

In front of her--very closely, immediately in front of her--is a hundred-meter drop.

She is standing on a narrow ledge, extending barely a meter in front of her, in the middle of a tall stone cliff face. Above her, the cliff disappears up into the darkness. Below, a forest of pine trees extends as far as the eye can see from the base of the cliff, spreading over gently rolling hills shrouded by starlit mist.

For a moment, she wonders if this could be the cliff from the first environment, but--no. Not only is there no sea before her, everything about this place, from the hard gray stone of its face to the pine-scented tinge in the cold, crisp night air, speaks of an entirely different cliff in an entirely different climate.

Without much hope, she reaches a hand toward the doorknob behind her, only to find it not locked but rather gone entirely. Scraping her palm along the stone, she can find no sign that mere seconds ago, it was a door. _Of fucking course not._

_Should have propped the door open when you had the chance. Idiot._

Carefully, she eases her way to the left, where the ledge thickens infinitesimally. As she moves, her left foot suddenly collides with a fist-sized rock, and for a sickening instant she loses her balance, her center of gravity pitching perilously forward before she catches herself. Gripping the rough stone with the tips of her fingers, she presses her back against the cliff face, breathing hard.

The cliff face that once held a door to a safe, blustery, sun-kissed city. Why couldn’t she have left it open? _Idiot. Idiot, idiot, stupid fucking idiot--_

She cuts herself off. _You needed to keep moving forward, to keep trying to figure out the hell’s going on and what you can do about it. And everything around you’s being controlled by some sadistic fucking enemy, anyway. It could have set you down at the base of this cliff nice and easy if it wanted to. It didn't. And all you can do is play its game, until you can figure out...something. Anything. Until you can find a way to be sure that you and your crew aren’t ever going to be at its mercy again._

 _And just how are you going to keep going now?_ chimes in a far more disparaging inner voice.

Taking a deep breath, she assesses her options. Down, a near-impossible descent that almost undoubtedly will leave her dead several times over, to be resurrected or not as this nightmare puppetmaster so chooses? Or up, a scarcely-more-feasible climb leading towards the unknown hidden in the misty dark?

She is, however, saved from making the choice.

A long, piercing sound splits the night air, and she whips her head to the right, peering into the darkness where the cliff face curves around and vanishes into the distance. Something is moving towards her, still small in the distance but growing larger, its trajectory hugging the edge of the cliff not far below her ledge. Another ten seconds, and she can see make it out.

A black locomotive. From a long-ago time. A very long-ago time.

Steam curls from its smokestack, a thick cloud trailing over the cars that follow it and away out of sight. She can hear the hiss of the pistons and the clack of the wheels against the tracks, growing louder as the train approaches.

There must be a track, nearly invisible to her in the inky darkness, only five or ten meters below the narrow ledge on which she is currently trapped. She thinks, for a moment, of waiting for the train to pass and then attempting to climb down to the track...and then what? Still be a good ninety perilous meters from the distant, uninhabited ground?

The train whistles again, the sound splitting through the night.

_You know what you need to do, girl._

To her left, the meter-wide ledge extends along the sheer cliff face perhaps ten or twelve meters, gradually narrowing into nothing. She's going to have one shot.

The train steams toward her, curving along the inward arc of the cliff, and she counts silently, waiting. As the locomotive comes even with her, she whirls, pushing off with her right hand to face fully to the left, already in motion. Sprinting along the ledge, there is no time for thoughts or fears or observations, only the pure, brutal need to go faster.

She catapults herself off the end of the ledge, flying through the darkness for frozen moments, hands outstretched, body loose, until--

_THUD._

The impact is bone-shaking, and the speed of one sprinting human might have been enough not to die a horrible death upon impact with a train car travelling kilometers per hour faster, but not enough to prevent her from skidding backwards along the metal roof of the car, scrabbling desperately at the surface. The lower half of her body flies off the end of the car, one ankle colliding painfully with something, the hitch or maybe the car behind, before her frantically reaching hands seize a bar at the end of the car, wrapping around it for dear life as her body flops down against the car's side. Multiple parts of her body, some of them already less than intact from the initial impact, quietly go _crunch_. She screams.

The train whistle screams.

Somehow, her frozen and bleeding hands maintain their grip, and as she dangles off the end of the car, she catches some measure of her breath.

There’s no side opening on this end of the car; after closing her eyes for a brief, stolen moment of despair, she begins to pull herself up. Her hands and arms howl with pain, as does her chest and her throbbing ankle. Gasping raggedly, she makes it over the edge of the car on her third attempt, and is instantly assailed by the rushing wind. But there _is_ a hatch, square and solid, near the middle of the car. Tears stream from her eyes as she crawls towards it, hand over hand, and reaches with freezing and bleeding fingers for the latch.

Dim light greets her as she shoves the hatch open. This is a car meant for human occupation, then, not stuffed with cargo; she exhales in fervent relief as she positions herself to drop lightly down into the car. 

This maneuver does not go precisely the way she plans.

One minute she is holding on to the edge of the opening, lowering her body into the car; the next her broken hands give out and she is crashing to the floor of a narrow aisle. A shooting pain lances through her chest from the place where her ribs are broken, and everything cuts out.

 

Something smells wonderful.

Blinking her eyes open, it takes her only moments to get her bearings this time: the cliff, the train. She is lying crumpled in the aisle of the car, walls of crates and boxes surrounding her on each side. Cautiously, she takes a breath; not only is there no more stabbing pain, but her hands and arms and shins and ankle no longer scream in protest as she slowly sits up. Which means…

_You fucking puppetmaster monster._

Hatred mixes with a deeply reluctant gratitude; to be killed and brought back to life may be torturous, but she certainly wouldn't be able to do anyone any good if this simulation simply left her dead.

Grabbing the edge of the nearest crate, she pulls herself to her feet, looking around the warmly lit interior of the train car.

The air is warm and smoky, redolent with grease and the rich, nutty scent of… what? She makes her way down the narrow aisle, bracing herself with one hand against the train’s jolts. At a small metal stove near the car’s front end, steam is curling out of a battered kettle, and metal cups and cloth bags are squeezed together in the small wooden shelf when she opens it. She reaches for a bag and peers into it, then sticks her nose in, inhaling deeply. Coffee beans. Warm and rich, making her mouth yearn for the snap of good, hot coffee.

_Don’t get distracted._

Setting the coffee grounds back on their shelf, she walks to the door on the front end of the car. Wiping a hand against the steamed glass window in the door, she can see a walkway between this car and the next. She wrenches the door open and makes her way across, wincing at the sound of the wind. _Fucking train._

The next car is much the same as the last, but along with a few crates stacked against the walls, there is what appears to be spare mechanical parts, some old and some new, stacked neatly in open crates. There are boxes of tools, a few stacked chairs, and, near the end of the car, a table bracketed to the wall, surface littered with odds and ends. Barely audible over the noise of the train, a repetitive sound is coming from the table’s surface. No, not just a sound. A voice.

“don’t know if--don’t know if--don’t know if--don’t know if--”

She walks to the table, staring at the the detritus scattered across it, nuts and bolts and papers filled with cramped handwriting.

The voice is coming from a small, rectangular device shoved under a small box holding pencils and rulers, affixed to the wall as an ersatz shelf. She picks it up, staring at it. It is white, with gray buttons along the side. Something in her memory is telling her that while it is not on par with the technology of her own reality, it is a bit more advanced than most of the machinery around her. As with the scientific equipment in the the observatory, a voice in her head labels it _ancient_. But some residue of memory remembers seeing something like this before, or reading about it, anyway.

“don’t know if--don’t know if--don’t know if--”

The words repeat, an infinite loop ending with a stuttering click every few instants. After committing the voice and its words to memory, in case this place, this enemy, won’t let her hear it again, she presses the buttons, one after another, until finding one that shuts the sound off. She turns the device over in her hands, then presses the one button she did not yet touch, flat and wide. The side of the device springs open and a thin rectangle--about the length and width of a deck of cards, but half the thickness--pops out. At its side, a shiny brown tape travels from one embedded wheel to another. A tangled loop extends on one side of the tape’s path, the shiny material slightly crimped from its current misuse.

A few moments of experimentation, twirling the wheels and fiddling gently with the tape, and she has spooled it back into position, one straight band leading from one wheel to another. Gently, she pops it back into its player and presses the middle gray button.

“--love you.”

She startles at the words, and stares at the tape player. It is not forthcoming, hissing wordlessly away to itself, and after a few moments, there is a click and then silence. Sighing, she pops the tape out again, only to realize that after her respooling fix, the tape was wound nearly all the way on one side, only seconds away from finishing entirely.

Another few minutes of experimentation, and she has it respooling in the other direction with one of the gray buttons. Closing her eyes, she uses the time to take a few long, shaky breaths, thinking of nothing until the tape clicks and falls silent, waiting.

She pushes the middle button.

“Chief Engineer’s log. Stardate unknown. Approximately sixteen hours in this--place.”

_B’Elanna._

“We’ve got more people arriving every few minutes; about a dozen and a half now. Janeway, Nicoletti and I are still working on a technical solution. From what we know about the nature of the program, we should be able to tamper with it from the inside just enough to get some measure of control over it.”

_B’Elanna Torres, Chief Engineer of the U.S.S. Voyager. I remember you._

“Tuvok and his handful of security are dealing with the practical elements of the plan. I have to admit it’s good to have him here. This is one of our more...unnerving challenges over the years. A little Vulcan logic is good for everyone’s composure, I think.” B’Elanna’s voice wavers slightly; it is clear that even her own near-legendary composure is being tested.

“And we have coffee. What more could we ask for, right? Well, the destruction of everything I am and everything I know _is_ a bit of a drag, I’ll give you that. Losing my childhood as I worked on the train alone, before Nicolleti first got here, wasn’t so bad, right? It wasn’t going to be a practical problem until I started to lose track of how to do my goddam _job_. I told Janeway that I’ve forgotten everything I know from my introductory engineering courses, which at least confirms what everyone’s saying as they arrive. The longer you're here, the more you lose. So the faster we work...well. We need to work faster.”

A few moments of clicking silence. _We were gathered together, then, some of us, when B'Elanna recorded this tape. Tuvok. B’Elanna. Susan. Others. They were here._

“Chief Engineer’s log. Stardate unknown. Seventeen hours and change in this place.”

 _Was_ I _here?_

“More arrivals. Still working. Getting everyone’s stories has become a priority. We need to know all we can about this program, and its intentions.

“As best we can tell, everyone has an environment based on their personality. Their...desires, their identity. So Neelix has his kitchen, Nicoletti has a tropical beach combined from all the planets she’s visited with her family, Harry has San Francisco and his favorite cafes, the Doctor has his stupid microscopic teaching simulations, Seven has the unimatrix, and when Tom shows up I’m sure he’ll have been dicking around in Captain Proton or something else based on his usual nonsense…” There is something in B'Elanna's voice, less a catch than an overemphasis on the mocking cadence of these last words, as though she is trying too hard not to let her voice waver. “And I have this stupid train and its engines, a real-life trainset for a grown-up mechanical engineer. It just goes round and round, like the galaxy’s most sophisticated toy trainset, and I can plug away all day and there’ll always be something new going _sproing!_ , some new problem to solve, but without a single person’s life actually depending on me to solve it. And it was silly and exciting and _fun_ , dammit, and I hate this _val tahqeq_ for reading us, _knowing_ us this way and fucking using it against us!”

There is a pause, B’Elanna’s harsh breaths gradually calming, until there is a whisper of a grin in her next words. “Although I'd like to point out that I was _fixing_ this train, not _driving_ it. First person to make an engineer-engineer joke gets kicked off the side of the cliff.

“An environment tailored to give you all you want, and no memory of all you've lost.” B’Elanna makes a disgusted noise. “It must be a way for this... _thing_...to keep its victims pacified. And keep them forever.”

When B’Elanna speaks again, after a moment of dark silence, her tone of forced amusement is back. “Not that the one good thing about this disaster could last, of course. Now that everyone’s showing up, and we’re trying to find a way out...oh look, we’re all counting on the engineers again, and there’s nothing simulated about _this_ problem. No rest for the weary, huh?

“At least the nature of the environments means no one’s suffering, wherever they are.” B’Elanna’s voice takes on a slightly conspiratorial tone, as though she is grinning. “I wonder what Janeway’s was. She hasn't said peep about it. Her ready room, maybe? I can't imagine her wanting to be anywhere but in the thick of things, preferably bossing us all around--"

“B’Elanna? How is it going?”

_That’s my voice. Mine._

“Ma’am! Uh, sorry, just finishing up my log. I’m glad we found this old recorder; I can make a log while I work. Almost like being back on the ship with _real_ technology.”

Muffled laughter. “You’re doing good work, B’Elanna. I’m headed down to the end car to talk with Tuvok about the plan for after we’ve finished working out the technical solutions. Do you still think we’ll have it ready within five hours?”

“Yes. Getting there now. Shouldn’t even be too hard, once we make it to the control room.”

“Good. Get ready to brief me; as soon as we begin we’re sending you out of here on an offshoot.”

“But--”

“No buts. I need your expertise to finish this, but once we’re onto the next phase, first priority is getting you to safety. I’m glad--”

She does not find out what her former self was glad of, however, or whether B’Elanna argued further; B’Elanna must have turned off the tape recorder to finish the conversation, because the tape unspools a few seconds of silence and then B’Elanna’s tired voice is titling a new entry.

“Chief Engineer’s log. Star--”

But she presses the pause button, taking a moment to metabolize what she has just heard, what she now knows. Janeway. _My surname. Janeway. My name. Mine._

There is a deep rightness to the name; B’Elanna’s embarrasment at being caught by her former self while talking about someone named Janeway could have multiple causes, after all, but as soon as her mind tried on the name, it felt right.

She thinks of what B’Elanna said, the joke about her bossing them around. It all fits together--her realization that she was a scientist, B’Elanna’s assertion that she spent time “bossing them all around,” her latent feelings of protectiveness towards her crew and the letters marked on her arm. She must be some kind of team lead in the science and engineering sections of their ship, and the letters on her arm must be a task that she was responsible for completing, after the technical team assembled on this train figured out their plan.

 _Bossing us all around._ She’s higher up in the hierarchy than B’Elanna as Chief Engineer, then. The thought is an odd one, that she, her former self, had been entrusted with that amount of authority and responsibility.

It feels odd, but it feels good.

Fingers trembling only slightly, she presses play.

“--date unknown. Approximately nineteen hours in. Fuck this fucking fucker. That’s all.”

Click, click, click.

“Chief Engineer’s log. Stardate unknown. Twenty hours. Listen. I’m an engineer. I studied subspace theory, quantum physics and nano-ciruitry. I can eat classical physics for lunch, and I know how to program every system in an intrepid-class starship. This simulation...it’s ridiculous. It’s too advanced. Everything we throw at it, it knows how to counter. If we could just get a side portal open, hotwiring the controls is simple enough; Nicoletti worked out the code for that an hour ago, before she...while she was still here. But the connection to the side portal is emotional, not logical. A variation on ancient tales of magic, as thought this stupid AI and whoever programmed it has delusions of grandeur.” B’Elanna’s voice rises. “You’re just a collection of ones and zeroes on a power trip. You know that, don’t you?”

Click, click. When B’Elanna speaks again, her voice is weary. “This thing can see everything in your mind, and you have to _know what you’re asking_ before you can ask it. And to know what you’re asking, you have to know everything about who you are. And the longer you’re here, the more you lose. Someone will need to retrieve their memory again, know exactly who they are, and that’s…” There is a meaningful pause. “Harder than anticipated.”

 _But I’m_ doing _that._ For the first time since she leapt onto the train, real hope flickers in Janeway’s chest. _I_ am _retrieving my memory. Step by step, I’m getting it all back. I can do it, B’Elanna, no matter how hard it is, no matter how difficult this simulation makes it. Just tell me how to, to ‘hotwire the controls’ once I’ve finished regaining my identity, and I can do it. I can do all of it._

And B’Elanna just admitted that said 'hotwiring' was the technical part. Could she have made notes? Janeway begins thumbing through the papers on the desk, squinting at B’Elanna’s handwriting as she listens with half an ear to the recording.

“One advantage is that the people who’ve made it here seem to lean stubborn. One of the security ensigns muttered that as a joke at first, but turns out it’s anything but. The more stories we hear, the more people who’ve done everything from disobeyed signs to parachuted out of airplanes to make it out of their environments and collect others from theirs...it makes sense.

"And this is just conjecture,” B’Elanna’s voice lowers still further, “but I’d say we have a disproportionately high concentration of fucked-up crewmembers, too. Not everyone on this ship who’s had some or the other kind of fucked-up experience or breakdown over the last few years is here, but just about everyone here...well...

“But you didn’t hear that from me.”

Click, click, click.

“Log. Twenty-three hours.”

There is another sound in the background now, the faint murmur of voices. She thinks she might be able to hear her own, blending up and down with Tuvok’s calm words.

“We’re about ready. We're just double-checking the steps for getting this thing under our control once the person we prep makes it through. Over a third of the crew is here now, even with the...losses of those who went to retrieve others and never came back. I’m telling myself that they’re probably fine, they probably just got trapped again…” B’Elanna’s voice, once again, wavers before coming back with forced confidence. “If all goes well, once we put the plan into place, we’ll be able to control this thing enough to save everyone. The ones who never made it here...the ones who left and were lost again...Susan... _Tom..._ ” Her voice is shaky again, shaky and ineffably weary. “We’ve got to make this work. If we can’t, if time runs out…”

Janeway shivers at the genuine fear in B’Elanna’s tone. _What happens if time runs out? What happens if not everyone is saved? Tell me, B’Elanna, because whatever happened to all of you that left you not safe but also not here, I need to know, so I can find you._

“Well, I don’t know where we’re going to end up then.” B’Elanna’s voice is soft, discouraged. Deeply, genuinely fearful.

_Fuck. Fucking fucking fuck._

“But it’s _going_ to work. It _has_ to.”

A long pause.

“There's still so many unaccounted-for. No one has found Tom or Chakotay or Naomi yet. Ensign Wildman’s here--she’s--” B’Elanna’s voice cracks. “I hate this. Whoever programmed it can go to hell.”

Another moment of silence. “Listen. Janeway and I are going to figure out a way to make this work. Tom, if you’re reading this--stay safe, right?”

Janeway wipes a frustrated tear from her eye. _A team of scientists and engineers figured out a solution, or most of one,_ she reminds herself. _Even if it didn’t work, figuring out exactly what they did is still your best chance of replicating that plan, and this time, succeeding._

_Because you have to._

“Log. Twenty-three hours. Everything’s ready. Tuvok’s still throwing a very Vulcan fit about Janeway putting herself in danger, and Janeway’s in a snit about _me_ refusing to stay out of danger, but I told her, well. It’s _all_ dangerous. Everyone’s in danger, and I--I don’t know if any of it will matter, in the end. I don’t know if we're going to make it in time. And if we do, will we have enough of ourselves left? The longer you stay here, the more you lose. We’ve been reminding each other of who we are. But what happens after we split up? Who will remind us then?

"I’m telling myself that no matter what, I’ll remember my name, and as long as I think of my name, I’ll remember who I am.”

 _My name. I must have had a first name. Maybe if I can remember that, I’ll remember something more about who I am, too. Not that B’Elanna’s plan was necessarily logically sound, but still, I can see where she was coming from. Janeway...Janeway..._ She hums to herself, a flat note before the surname, like water to prime a pump. For an agonizing moment, she almost has it, the feeling of the sound of a name brushing against her consciousness. But then B’Elanna’s voice begins to speak again, and the memory ( _Trivial. Unimportant._ ) is gone.

“Log. Twenty-five hours."

B'Elanna's voice is once more in perfect, crisp control. 

“We're ready. Everyone knows their part. We move out in ten minutes. If anyone's listening, if it didn't work--it's all in the notes. Remember yourself and you'll be able to find a side portal. Find a side portal and you can hotwire the control room.

"I don’t know if this is going to work, but it’s our only shot.”

There is a moment of silence, the tape clicking quietly along.

“Tom, if you’re listening to this--stay safe. Get home. I love you.”

There is hissing silence, then, and a short minute later, the harsh click of the player reaching the end of the tape.

Ice twists inside her. _What were you--were_ we _trying to do, B'Elanna? And why didn't it work?_ She runs over the evidence in her mind, quickly. _If the plan had worked, we would've been somewhere, together. We were trying to gather our people from the different environments, that much is clear._ But instead, she was deposited back in her garden by the sea, memory and identity very nearly wiped completely. Hell, it _was_ wiped completely. It was only because of the writing on her arms that she felt compelled to venture out beyond the door so clearly forbidding her entry, and only after that that she did begin to remember, rather than merely puzzling things out based on a bra or a bandage or letters inked on--

The letters. The writing on her arm. She had nearly forgotten. _Damn this place._  Janeway's heartbeat quickens as she scans B’Elanna’s notes, and the notes in her own handwriting, the same as the handwriting on her arm, spelling out a code of colors.

_Hotwire the control room._

Wires. Circuits. Buttons.

Components created by electrical engineers, proclaiming their use and identity with varying sizes and markings and patterns and colors. The wiring and circuitry of any electrical computational system, the control room of this nightmare included, would likely be color-coded.

Encoded on her arm is the way out.

 

This place-- _the enemy,_ as she has begun to think of it--permits her to shove the rest of B’Elanna’s notes into her knapsack and make her way through the remaining cars towards the front of the train. As she glances around, she pictures clusters of crewmen standing here, talking and planning, sharing their stories of the environments in which they were deposited. (Just how _did_ Voyager’s crew end up in this mess in the first place? A question for another day; for now she must focus on getting them out.)

Once, she might have remembered all their faces. Now they blur together in her recently-regained memory.  _The longer you're here, the more you lose._

Just as it has each time it replays in her head, B'Elanna's fatalistic summation of the simulation's effects sends a shiver down Janeway's spine.

But at least now, thanks to B'Elanna and the others and all their ingenuity, she has a goal and a fight: Regain her memory and her identity, so that she can access the control room through a side portal, whatever that is, and re-wire the equipment as B’Elanna and the rest of Voyager’s engineering team had planned to do, and this time, _succeed_ \--all before her memories and her identity and her self are drained away again. And ignore the tiny voice in her head reminding her that she has not seen another living soul since she stumbled through the garden door, and that even if (an all-too-large if) she can get to the control room before she loses the memory of what to do with the instructions on her arm, it may already, in the only sense that truly matters, be far too late.

The train whistles again, and again. Then again. Annoyed, she cranes her head out the side window of this car, two before the locomotive.

Illuminated by the train’s front lights is a wall, high and stone and extremely solid in appearance, rapidly approaching.

The train does not appear to be slowing down, but...surely it’s not going to crash. That would be ridiculous. She thinks of B’Elanna’s words. _The train just goes round and round, like the galaxy’s most sophisticated toy trainset._

The train still isn’t slowing.

This place was designed to be safe and happy--for B’Elanna. She’s not here now.

 _This is not your place._ Indeed.

Running to the door between this car and the next, she crashes through it and over the walkway, dashing down the aisle and out onto the next walkway to rattle the door to the locomotive. Locked.

If she can pick the lock, or maybe get onto the roof, search for a down hatch, she can get into the driver’s compartment, start applying the brakes…

The wall looms, growing larger every second. Not enough time. There is not enough time.

“ _Motherfucker,_ ” she says, with feeling. The screaming wind sweeps the invective away as she launches herself up the metal ladder on the side of the locomotive and onto its roof, ducking to stay under the stream of smoke. If she jumps at just the right time, and if her luck is just right, the momentum of the crash should send her flying. Hopefully over the wall. Possibly into it.

At the very least, she won’t be killed in the trainwreck itself.

She closes her streaming eyes for a moment, reaching up one-handed to tie the pack more securely around her. The cup and the second mildewed sweater might not be especially useful in a journey now more clearly defined as a 24th-century technical challenge, but the blue creature--well. She is holding onto it for the child, of course, so that she might someday bequeath it to the Captain (it hits her for the first time--does that mean, perhaps, the captain of Voyager?)

And if it’s a comfort to at least have one life-form (or small, fuzzy simulacrum thereof) on her side in a place empty but for menacing blank-eyed simulations...well, it isn’t as though there’s anyone around to judge her for it.

Opening her eyes, Janeway squints once more into the night. The wall is approaching quickly, grey smudge turning to defined shape, tall and stone and very, very...solid.

_Physics. It’s all just physics. You’re a scientist on a 24th-century starship, Janeway. You should be able to… How did B’Elanna put it? Eat physics for lunch._

But there was, of course, no time to make real calculations; this will be a mixture of estimation and instinct and sheer dumb luck.

“We’re going to have to make a leap of faith, my friend,” she murmurs. The pack’s straps dig into her back as she shifts slightly, as though the stuffed creature is giving her a reassuring hug.

The wall gets larger. Her muscles tense. The wind howls.

3...2...1...

She springs into the air as the deafening crash reverberates through the night. In the instant before her feet leave the surface, the first millisecond of impact is enough to jar her to her bones.

Once again, she is airborne, flying through the cold, crisp night air surrounded by the scream of metal as it rends and crushes itself against unyielding stone. She can see nothing in the darkness ahead, but she extends her arms as best she can, keeping her body loose against the coming impact. A leap of faith, as she told her small blue companion, but without the faith. She does not have any kind of trust that whatever lies waiting in the dark will be kind to her tumbling form, only the grim certainty that the only way forward is to throw herself into the unknown and hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Not to beg for comments, but I'm dying to know what The Reader is thinking after these chapters, so even a single-word reaction is greatly appreciated. ;)


	8. The Cove

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: Injury

The first things to hit her are leaves, branches, and she is falling through them, too quickly to even think of trying to hold on. A branch hits her hard in the stomach as she plummets through the forest canopy, and she blacks out for a moment, pain overwhelming her every sense and thought. She manages to half-grasp at another branch, scraping her palms; she is falling too quickly to get a grip, but the brief clasp slows her descent before her body finally connects, with a thud, to the soft, spongy forest floor.

Gasping for air, Janeway stays where she has fallen for several moments. Curling onto her side slightly, she permits a whimper of pain to escape her lips, and, as she comes back to herself, follows it with a torrent of cursing.

Slowly, she sits up.

The pain, which feels like the universe’s worst collection of soon-to-be bruises, is terrible, but doesn’t get any worse as she moves, cautiously flexing and bending each limb. Nothing broken, then, and nothing injured badly enough to kill her, this time around.

Which is nice.

She hurts. But she is not dead.

Janeway pulls her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. Adrenaline and pain are still flooding through her, and she sits still for several more minutes, breathing shakily with her forehead pressed against her knees. Gradually, her breathing evens out and she raises her head, peering around at the forest surrounding her.

This is not the forest that she has just left behind. The trees that the train steamed its way above were towering old-growth pines, their scent infusing the cold air through a blanket of mist. The air of this environment is softer and warmer; the trees deciduous and varying more widely in height. As Janeway sits silently, she can hear cicadas singing, along with the occasional flap of wings and patter of tiny feet. A frog croaks in the distance, and she smiles, transported, for just an instant, back to childhood summer nights.

But she is not a child, and she is not on Earth, and she has a mission.

Pressing her scraped palms against the soft ground, Janeway pushes herself to her feet, and begins to make her way through the trees. It is hard to tell, but as her eyes have acclimated to the nighttime forest, she is increasingly sure that she can see, to the left, a glimmer of yellow light.

It takes her only a minute of weaving her way through the trees to arrive at its source, and as Janeway steps out of the edge of the woods, the sparkling lights of the familiar view before her take her breath away.

 _Seven has the unimatrix_ , B’Elanna said.

Of course.

Smiling through the bruising pain, Janeway makes her way down the winding path towards the lights.

Unimatrix Zero is as beautiful as she remembers; as beautiful as it must have been to the drones each time they opened their eyes into their shared safe haven. Before it was burned and destroyed--Janeway can remember that part of the simulated refuge’s history as well.

But, nestled within this collection of programmed environments, here it is again, a simulation of a simulated world.

The winding path opens onto a clearing, a place Janeway vaguely remembers as a meeting place before the final battle. It is evident that this recreated version has now been used as a base of a similar sort. Footprints of Starfleet-issue boots tread across the dusty ground, and tables and chairs are littered with an incongruous mixture of drinking vessels, writing implements, and other human miscellany that seem to span eras. Crewmembers must have brought the objects--from a stemmed wineglass to a steel cup--from their various environments, just as she has a tin cup and a couple of mildewy sweaters in her pack from her own.

She crosses the clearing, examining a flat table with a haphazard collection of modern and old-fashioned medical supplies--scissors, a hypospray, a roll of bandaging. The bandage looks familiar, and she rubs it thoughtfully between thumb and forefinger. It is the same color, width, and texture as the one that has been wrapped around her leg since she first gained awareness in the garden.

Continuing her examination, Janeway makes her way to the right, where consoles are set into a small structure abutting the vertical rise. Swirling green symbols trace up and down the screens. Borg technology. She shivers slightly. She may not remember everything about the Borg or their contact with Voyager, but she remembers the general thrust of this mission--a plan to rescue the few people that the Borg did not control utterly within their domain, and, in doing so, to strike a blow against the Collective. A Collective that erased the souls of individuals, keeping them forever in its grasp.

“Not so very different from this little program, hmm?” Janeway mutters to the simulation around her. It does not respond.

She hesitates, hand hovering in front of the alien green lettering. She has faint memories, too, of using this type of interface before, learning it and familiarizing herself with it before missions involving the Borg. And something about this is bothering at her, niggling at the corner of her mind. Something about the Borg, and Voyager. But her memory and her thoughts feel hazier the closer she gets to it, so she puts it from her mind as she examines the panel.

Near the bottom of the screen is a series of lettering that her brain tells her means  _recent recording_. Reaching down, she gives it a light, cautious tap, and a list in Human lettering unscrolls under it.

     _log1  
     _log2  
     _log3  
     _log4  
     _log5

She presses the first recording.

“Log, hour eighteen point five. Seven of Nine, Tertiar--Astrometrics Officer, USS Voyager. I have chosen to imitate Lieutenant Torres’ efficient example and record my progress and observations as we continue our current plan.” Seven’s voice is rough, even, and thoughtful, just as it is in Janeway’s memories of her from times before. “Approximately sixty percent of the crew has now gathered in my and the Lieutenant’s designated environments, or have left in teams to search the simulation for the rest of Voyager’s complement. Using the technology at hand in these environments, we are beginning the analysis and programming that will allow one individual who has recovered their identity to pass through a side portal to the control room.

“I will be leaving with the next wave of search parties shortly, and will hopefully return within the next hour to continue helping the programming task group. End log.”

Janeway pauses before tapping the second recording, taking a moment to process what she has heard. The crew, the environments, the gathering, the plan. All this fits with B’Elanna’s words and with her own blurry memories. Janeway stares out into the horizon for a moment more, then closes her eyes briefly. A surprising lump of emotion has risen in her throat at the sound of Seven’s voice. Harry’s personality might have been present in his environment, and her own memories of Tuvok were certainly triggered in his, but it is a new kind of closeness, to hear B’Elanna's and now Seven’s actual spoken words hitting her own actual ear in the present moment.

Well, her own simulated ear, anyway. Janeway closes her eyes for a moment, then glares briefly at the entire damned simulation, the enemy, all around her.

_Fuck you. I’ll see them again. When we all get back to reality. When we get home._

And something is niggling at her again, a sick swooping sensation in her stomach as she thinks of...getting home?

 _But we_ will _get home. I will find us a way out of this place, out of these simulated environments, out of the code where my crew’s minds are buried, and we’ll make it back to reality. Back to our ship. Home._

Something is niggling at her memory again, a feeling of unease growing in the pit of her stomach, and she shakes her head to clear it, pinching the bridge of her nose.

Her simulated head is getting a headache.

_Focus, Janeway. You’ll get your memories back. You’ll solve this puzzle. All you need to do now is keep going._

She touches the screen.

“Log, hour nineteen. After conferring with the task group, it appears that we will be ready to mount our escape attempt after four to six more hours of work. For the next few hours, I will alternate between participating in periodic search parties to gather the rest of the crew, and assisting with the programming in preparation for creation of the final escape route. If our escape is successful, we will return to reality, leaving these simulated environments forever.”

There is a brief pause.

“This goal is critically important to all of us. However, I admit that I--” Another short pause. “I find it--painful to know that I will have to once more leave this facsimile of a place where I was--content.”

“Oh, Seven,” Janeway whispers, feeling her heart constrict at the tumult of restrained emotion all too audible in Seven’s soft, level voice. This isn’t fair to Seven, someone who has already had her personhood ripped from her once. Not only to be trapped here and have her mind altered by this program, but then to know she must walk away from this simulated echo of the only experience she had, as she grew up, of happiness and family… Janeway’s fists tighten as she thinks of B’Elanna’s words. _An environment tailored to give you all you want, and no memory of all you've lost. It must be a way for this...thing...to keep its victims pacified. And keep them forever._

It is cruel, and it is wrong, and it is so deeply, utterly unfair.

“I will now finish assisting Ensign Kim with the next phase of programming. Many crewmembers have reported memory loss to a degree that is affecting their ability to complete their tasks. However, collaboration has proved effective in counterbalancing the losses of each given individual with the remaining knowledge of others.” There is another emotion in Seven’s voice now, one that sounds almost like pride. “This crew, with no outside reinforcement, has faced the Borg Collective in pitched battle and succeeded. I have confidence that, even with a challenge as critical as this...they will adapt.”

And there it is, the first thing that was troubling Janeway in the corner of her mind when she thought of the Borg.

She feels cold.

Why the hell were they fighting the Borg on their own? Where was Starfleet?

A wave of dizziness and nausea hits her, cold terror sending her simulated heart thumping in her ears.

_Did something happen to Starfleet?_

Her throat is tight as she grasps desperately at the edge of the memories. They encountered the Borg. Repeatedly. They: her crew; Voyager. Where were the others? Other ships, other crews?

For that matter...why the hell did B’Elanna never mention the possibility of rescue by Starfleet?

And why did she, Janeway, not think of these things until now? Why was her slowly-recovering mind with her slowly-recovering memories taking in stride the idea that their crew was utterly on their own, that no help would be forthcoming?

She forces herself to breathe slowly, thinking of alternatives to cataclysmic disaster. Because… Now that she thinks about it, chewing over the snatches of memory and context she has been given to flesh out her time on Voyager, it does not seem likely that something utterly cataclysmic has happened to Starfleet. When Voyager encountered the Borg, she does not get the sense that this was because the Borg had overcome the Federation. It was…

_It was because we were alone. Somewhere, somehow._

_Where would we have been so alone? Where_ are _we?_

_Well: trapped in a simulation._

_But..._

_Where the hell_ were _we, our ship, our bodies, as we fought and survived alone during all these memories from...out there?_

She taps the third log.

“Log, hour twenty-two. The programming of the side portal remains on schedule. Lieutenant Torres and her team are eleven point five minutes behind schedule with their mathematical analysis; however, Captain Janeway has reminded me that the Lieutenant and her team are performing their calculations with pen and paper in a far more rustic environment. I believe that after--”

Seven’s voice goes on, but with trembling fingers, Janeway slams at the pause symbol.

_Captain Janeway._

Once again, she stands stock-still, frozen.

_Captain Janeway._

Slowly, mechanically, she slings the motheaten pack off her back, pulling out the stuffed blue creature that she had promised the missing child she would give to ‘the Captain.’

Janeway takes a deep breath, feeling as though she is underwater as she stares at the blinking recording, then back at the blue creature, then back at the recording.

_It’s…_

_It’s me._ I’m _the Captain._

 

Janeway paces away from the console, needing to walk, needing to move.

_How can I be the captain?_

_I don’t…_

_I can’t…_

_I can’t be the captain of a starship. I…I thought I was the leader of a department when B’Elanna talked about me; I was surprised enough at that. I can’t be a leader, I’m blank, I’m empty, I’m…_

Coming to a standstill, she takes a deep breath, closing her eyes.

_I’m...the Captain._

_The captain of Voyager._

_Apparently._

For a few minutes, she thinks of nothing, pacing in circles around the clearing, letting her mind focus only on the ground in front of her. Finally, taking a few more deep breaths and bringing her mind back to the task in front of her, she returns to Seven’s console, planting her feet firmly in the dirt in front of it and restarting the recording.

“--the other half of my task force returns from their meeting with Lieutenant Torres, we will be able to complete the remaining programming promptly and efficiently. End log.”

Janeway taps the penultimate line.

“Log, hour twenty-three. I have returned from another search party, and Ensign Kim and I have nearly finished the programming to be completed from these consoles. Over my time working with the backdoors in this code, and experiencing the simulation from within, I have made several observations about the nature of this reality, most of which I have now shared with the others with whom I am working.

“It is as though this simulation does not anticipate resistance. If it had been meant to hold unwilling beings, it would be more overtly guarded. Instead, it has been reported by those who have made their way to us that the doors between multiple environments are marked with “Do Not Enter” or an equivalent directive, yet open to the touch. Doors have locked, environments have turned hostile, and people have been hurt--but major injuries have been healed, and the locking doors and dangerous conditions seem more like an ad hoc reaction to our actions, rather than a feature baked into the normal running of this simulation.

“While I am taking care to guard against excessive personification of what may ultimately be a non-sentient computer program, a colloquial description of this simulation’s actions and reactions might be that it...seems as though it is…” Seven hesitates. “Scrambling to figure out how to address the situation in which it now finds itself.

“Based on our observations of the varying ease with which we all have crossed environments and joined forces with other crewmembers, parts of the simulation’s code tell it to react in certain ways, other sections tell it something else, and still other sections of its code have no relevant instructions for such a scenario. In other words, when faced with active resistance, it finds itself unequipped for stopping us. As B’Elanna Torres put it during my brief meeting with her in her own cramped and noisy environment, it ‘trips over its own feet.’

“In addition to such concerns about the...intentions and abilities of this program, all of this underscores an even more fundamental observation that this simulation, while theoretically able to control all that happens within it, seems, like any computer program, to be able only to follow its own pre-existing dictates, complex and responsive though they may be. It will do as it is programmed to do; it is not a villainous self-editing artificial intelligence out of a holonovel. It is built a certain way, with loops and paths and if-thens, and it responds to inputs—that is, our actions—as it was originally designed to respond.

“And, connecting back to my earlier point...I am not sure it was originally designed to deal with anyone acting like us.

"These observations and theories--or rather, hypotheses--have been voiced independently by several members of the crew, and there is general agreement that they have merit. Making them, indeed, scientific theories by definition when considering the lack of availability of further peer review.”

Janeway rolls her eyes at the semantics joke. It feels surprisingly good to feel Seven’s...presence, from her calm observations to her incredibly dry humor. B’Elanna’s and now Seven’s logs feel like a precious gift, a way to feel closer to the crewmates trapped in this simulation with her despite them currently being the virtual equivalent of buried alive.

“However, I have…” Seven hesitates. “I have another...perhaps it does not quite qualify as a hypothesis. This may mean that I am in possession of what the human officers refer to as ‘a hunch.’ My...hunch...is that…” Although Seven has undoubtedly already ensured there is no one in hearing distance, her voice lowers slightly, a silly, all-too-human instinct that brings a smile to Janeway's lips. “I am not sure that this simulation is intended to be hostile at all. Or at least, not in the way that my crewmates are characterizing it.”

Janeway’s smile turns to a scowl. _It doesn’t have to be a melodramatic supervillain from a drama to be hostile, Seven. It’s still the enemy._

“Captain Janeway, for example, has taken to referring to the program as ‘the enemy.’”

Janeway eyes the console resentfully.

“I believe,” Seven’s even voice continues, “that they are...resistant to the idea that there is nothing to either fight, or...save. Captain Janeway is able to rise to even the most desperate of challenges to protect another being or to combat a danger to Voyager. Yet she is at her strongest in times of challenge, and I have seen her...diminished...in situations without such a straightforward adversary.

“This more questionable...hunch about the nature of this reality I have chosen to keep to myself for the time being. If I can refine my hypothesis, and it becomes relevant to our strategy, I will share it. But I...have observed that my colleagues take strength from seeing this situation as an enemy that can be fought. I have no wish to disturb a thought process that appears to be genuinely beneficial in giving the crew energy for our mission and a greater sense of agency in the face of terrifying loss.

“Indeed, I also have felt anger over these past days. I am disturbed by the encroaching loss of my Human and Borg knowledge. I am...deeply concerned with the wellbeing of Naomi Wildman. I am frustrated that I do not know her status, and I am angry that this situation has befallen a collective of people who I consider my...mine. I am afraid that not all of them will survive this, even if the current plan succeeds, which causes me to feel great anger at the injustice and cruelty of this situation’s occurrence. When I bandaged Captain Janeway’s damaged leg, I felt anger that she had been hurt, even within a simulated reality, and anger that this meant other members of Voyager’s crew might also be damaged.”

Janeway stares at the glowing recording symbols without seeing them, lost in faint, flickering memories of Seven’s gentle, precise fingers wrapping the wound as she sat in this clearing, tense and exhausted, looking out over the cove and its glittering lights.

“I share the crew’s frustration and anger, and I understand the impulse to channel that anger in a way that allows for more effective resistance against the circumstances in which we find ourselves.”

There is a pause, the background sound of the recording snowing softly in the silence between Seven’s words.

“I am simply not sure that our characterization of this situation as a fight against a malevolent force is entirely...accurate.

“End log.”

The sea of emotions brought up by Seven’s words is confusing, but that confusion is oddly gratifying. Familiar. A feeling she has experienced before, in Voyager’s conference room and in her ready room; a feeling any starship captain worth their salt has learned to welcome. Now that she is gathering real memories of her crew, of the time before, Janeway is aware of the growing strength of another emotion: just how much she misses being able to listen to them. Their voices, their insights, and yes, their dissenting opinions. She stares at the blinking green lettering. _Seven, what I wouldn’t give to have you standing next to me right now._

 _Well, fix this, retrieve your crew, and then she will be. This part’s on you,_ she reminds herself sternly. _Captain._

 _And Seven, I appreciate your concern, but I’m doing perfectly fine with the possibility that this program isn’t actively malevolent, thank you all the same. It’s not difficult to maintain defiance for something that’s hurting the people I care about, maliciously or otherwise. Hell, from the age of twenty-three I’ve cursed the name of nebulas and ion storms and engine malfunctions and sheer bad luck whenever they hurt or threatened my crewmates, out there in the expanse of space. It doesn’t have to be personified_ or _malevolent for me to tell it to go fuck itself._

She selects the last log.

“Log, hour twenty-five. I have now arrived back in this environment after looping through the simulation with a final search party.

“In case this recording is preserved, and may help another individual some day, I have one final observation to record on the nature of this reality.

“This place is circular. It rearranges itself according to a calculus of its own, in internally concentric rings; I passed through Lieutenant Ayala’s domain twice as I made my way through thirteen environments to gather more crew, and arrived back in the Unimatrix when Tuvok was the one to open the door out of his environment for us, presumably because he shares a close and mutually respectful relationship with me.”

Janeway pauses the recording again, staring thoughtfully into the distance. Seven’s last throw-away remark indicates that the environments one is able to reach have to do with one’s relationship with the person for whom it was created. The amount of knowledge one has about that person, maybe, or perhaps just the strength of the emotional connection… That would explain why she, Janeway, has been able to reach the environments of the people she knows best on the crew. Most of the people she knows well seem to be on the senior staff, which…

 _Oh. Right. It’s because_ _you’re the captain,_ _Captain._ She shakes her head, smiling very slightly at herself. It’s still sinking in, the realization that not only was she part of a crew, she led that crew. _Did I lead them well? I hope so._

Well, she certainly needs to rise to the occasion and take care of her crew now. A creeping dread that she has been pushing away stirs inside her again. The scattered toys, B’Elanna’s frantic recording, the terrible emptiness of deserted world after deserted world. _I only stopped the loss of my memory when I saw the words on my arms. What if no one else had that; did that? B’Elanna reported how the crew, to a person, was losing memory and identity, the more the longer they were here. What if, once they lost enough, the simulation just...destroyed them? What if their minds, their souls, all that they are, were simply...erased?_

No. She can’t think like that. Seven said that the simulation isn’t malevolent, and if it’s not malevolent, it must have safeguards against data destruction. It would take pains not to simply erase the people within.

Besides, Janeway herself knows, from a half-remembered lifetime working with computer programs, how hard it is to erase data utterly from a system even if one is actually trying. How many whistleblower cases over the centuries have hinged on that oh-so-inconvenient-to-perpetrators fact? After the souls of her and her crew...her family...were transmuted into this program as data, they surely would not easily be irrevocably erased. No matter how corrupted or deeply buried, with enough time and effort, her crew’s minds _will_ be salvageable.

And she will save them.

She has to.

Pressing the screen again, she listens to the end of Seven’s last log.

“In several minutes, we will leave this simulation of the Unimatrix, perhaps for the last time. B’Elanna Torres and her engineering team require my assistance in her own environment.

“I only hope that we will be able to navigate there once again. Even that simple goal does not have a one hundred percent chance of success.

“Very little in this simulation has a one hundred percent chance of success.”

There is a long pause, Seven’s even voice growing a bit quieter, and a bit more confessional in tone. Once again, Janeway aches for her.

“This place is circular. I do not know if we will ever truly be able to escape. I confess that I am...afraid. And...even though this simulation does not consciously know what it does...I am angry.

“Many on this crew are angry.

“I hope that this crew’s anger, and our collective’s determination to save ourselves and each other, will be enough.

“End log.”

Janeway stares blankly at the screen for several minutes after Seven’s voice stops, pushing aside her own surging rage before she steps away to walk quickly around the clearing, gathering a roll of bandage and a few of the implements beside it for her pack. Sitting for a moment to fasten it closed, she finds herself leaning back, gazing out at the beautiful sweep of the cove and its lights sparkling in the dark.

Like the garden with its observatory, this environment is peaceful, and she has to fight the urge to stay another few moments, just to rest. Her rage is already forgotten, as though her mind is wrapped in soft cotton. And she is so very, very tired.

Forgotten.

Forgetting.

_No!_

She shakes herself hard, jumping to her feet as she reminds herself of the truth: Time is the enemy. Whether or not Seven’s deduction is correct, even if the simulation is not the malevolent force Janeway’s past and current self both originally believed, this much is certainly true: Time _is_ the enemy. Dally too long, and, once again, she will forget herself, and be the blank and empty person she was when she first found herself walking up the garden path.

She has not walked too far down the winding path towards the cove when she sees the door: grey, metal, and incongruous. It is not set in a looming wall this time, but, as with the portals in the desert and the cell, it is easy to pick out from its surroundings, neither aesthetically pleasing enough to match the more picturesque elements of the gentle refuge community, nor visually in sync with the advanced Borg technology.

With a final glance back at the simulated cove, Janeway reaches for the door, taking a breath and straightening her shoulders before pushing it open and stepping cautiously into the muted sunlight on the other side.


	9. The Ring

She is standing in an old-fashioned boxing gym, the wooden beams of its ceiling stretching at least two stories above her. Beams of sunlight filter through the smudged windows at the top of the high white wall across from her and slant down towards the ring, illuminating floating dust.

As she walks further into the echoing room, Janeway smiles.

She knows whose place this is.

How many times did she see Chakotay walking down the corridors of Voyager with his boxing gear on his way to the holodeck? How many times did he join her on the bridge, hair still wet from the shower after an early-morning workout?

This environment belonged to Chakotay. And that means that, even if B’Elanna and the others who had gathered on the train had not yet found him, at one point he too was here. Although being in the simulation is not a guarantee of safety--quite the opposite, in fact--Janeway can’t help a feeling of relief. In a situation with so many unknowns, at least Chakotay is not in some other kind of danger she hadn’t learned of yet.

He was here. And she can practically see him here, punching the bags or boxing in the ring, intensity crinkling his brow. Although the wide, cavernous space is relatively bare, no papers on the tables near the door and no recording device to be found as she makes a slow circuit of the room, Chakotay’s presence is tangible. This is the type of space he would have loved, peaceful and quiet. She can imagine him walking away from the ring (would he have been given a silver-eyed, simulated opponent?), wiping the sweat from his face with a clean towel, smiling.

With Chakotay’s face comes a flood of other memories. Neelix. Samantha Wildman. Billy Telfer and Isabelle Rameau and Joe Carey. _My crew._ She can remember them, really remember them--laughing, talking, working, celebrating. _My crew. I remember. I remember all of you._

And Chakotay…

She walks toward the ring, thinking of all their conversations, all the times they’ve shared. Their trust. Their friendship. Their arguments.

She frowns.

She cannot remember, quite, what they were arguing about; she still remembers people far more than she does the context of the crew’s challenges or Voyager’s missions. Once again, she feels a burst of quiet anger at all this place has taken from her, malevolently or otherwise.

As she has gained knowledge of both the situation in which she now finds herself, and the past that came before that, one trajectory of learning has been far more straightforward than the other. The more she learns about the simulation and the failed plan to escape its grip, the more she understands. There are still gaps, but reasonable conjecture is able to fill them in. How did they get here? Somehow, the crew of their starship was overpowered physically and placed in this simulation. The question answers itself, if only in broad strokes.

The more she learns of their history before that, however, the more questions she has.

Why was the crew of the USS Voyager facing the Borg alone?

Why was Seven not transported to Starfleet Medical upon rescue?

Why, when they ended up here, did the crew not count on rescue by Starfleet?

The answer to these questions has to be more than ‘only ship in the sector.’ But the more she learns, the more questions she has.

Meandering over to the nearest punching bag, she gives it an irritable poke. Why were she and Chakotay arguing so venomously, in several of her recollected memories? The context slides away from her, the exact words trickling away from her mind like water from cupped hands. She cannot remember the details, only the emotions. Guilt, anger, frustration, rage. _You were my first officer, Chakotay, and we were friends--I have far more memories of friendship than animosity. If we were captain and first officer of a Federation vessel, and we got along, why would there be so many memories of serious strife? Disagreements, yes, differences of opinion in tense situations--I remember those from my own time as a first officer._ A time, in her memory, with far fewer puzzles to solve. She remembers serving, remembers missions, remembers friends, with none of the incongruities that pop up when she thinks of Voyager. _But anger? Rage? What happened to us, that we would serve together for years without being rotated away from the ship if we couldn’t maintain overall professional unity?_

_What happened to us, or...what had we done?_

The ‘for years’ part troubles her, as well. They were on a long mission, that much is clear. A baby born on board in the first part of Voyager’s voyage is now a walking, talking child--albeit a half-human child, who has grown faster, accordingly--and Janeway can remember years of birthdays, of parties and away missions and meetings, hairstyle changes and shifting romantic relationships among her crew. Weddings. Funerals. But she can’t remember any mass crew transitions, the way she would if she had been captain of the same ship for multiple missions. For that matter, she can’t remember any of the long mandatory shore leaves that would alternate with those multiple missions, were she to remain captain of the same ship through all of them.

 _What_ was _our mission?_

Her head aches.

The questions pertaining to the situation at hand remain much simpler to ponder. Sinking into a chipped wooden chair and surveying the silent gym, Janeway reflects that her current, more detailed knowledge of how the environments came to be explains quite a bit that had utterly puzzled her when she first began to encounter them. In addition to the simple answer she ascertained earlier as to what happened when it rained in Naomi’s forest paradise--in simulated environment, weather would be irrelevant--Janeway finds herself grinning, despite her unease, as she thinks of that open-air kitchen with its incongruous furniture. The cast iron stove and painted china plates out of every childhood picture book, next to the metal and plastic chairs and tables and metal cups with black handles, just like in Voyager’s mess hall: Naomi’s simulation of a timeless storybook paradise, fleshed out with the only dining room furniture and coffee mugs she’d ever actually known.

Janeway's grin falls off her face, however, as she remembers the happy observation she made at the time, walking through those storybook rooms and open-air playroom: that if she were a few decades younger, she would’ve happily stayed in a place like that forever.

Which, evidently, is exactly the idea.

She glares around the gym environment, her chest filled with an anger so hot and furious that it is cold. _Fuck you. FUCK you, for manipulating a child this way._

Taking a few deep breaths to calm herself, Janeway closes her eyes. _They’re not lost. It’s not too late. The simulation is still running, and I will find them._ She runs a hand over the worn wood of the table beside her. _Don’t worry, Chakotay. Don’t worry, Naomi. I’m coming for you. I’m going to get my memory back, and then I’m going to use this color code to get us all free._

 

She remembers how she spoke with Naomi’s blue stuffed creature as she prepared to jump from the roof of the moving train, and, feeling only a little silly, Janeway finds herself pulling it from her pack again.

Sudden tears sting her eyes as she cuddles the toy close. Closing her eyes, she thinks back to the sunlit forest, remembering her concern that she would never find the gift’s intended recipient. How she went back, unable to bring herself to leave the gift behind, but unsure that she would ever be able to place it in the right hands--never dreaming that the right hands were, in fact, her own.

_Oh, Naomi. Chakotay. Seven. B’Elanna. Tuvok. Oh, god, Tuvok..._

Tears leak from her eyes. _I would give...I would give_ anything _to have you all in front of me, to know you were safe, to hold you in my arms again._

She thinks of the discarded toys, the terrible emptiness of all the environments prior. The fear in B’Elanna’s voice, hoping they wouldn’t run out of time. For a moment, the memories nearly bowl her over, fresh tears squeezing out of her closed eyes, but then, taking a deep, shaky breath, she stands, squaring her shoulders and opening her eyes again. In the world of the simulation, Janeway might feel empty and broken, but unlike the others, she is still _a person,_ not trapped somewhere deep within the code. She is a person with arms and legs and hands and feet and toes. She has the capability to affect this simulation. Now it’s time for her to save the people who have trusted their safety to her care and their lives to her hands.

After all, she’s the captain.

Giving the stuffed creature one last squeeze, she tucks it gently back in the pack and steps closer to the ring. Slipping under the rope, she pivots slowly inside the ring, wiping her eyes one final time as she gazes around Chakotay’s environment.

Closing her eyes once again, she tries to think only of Chakotay.

This is Chakotay’s place. She can feel the memory of his presence, his identity, all around her. She should draw on that connection while she's here; try to piece together more memories of their time spent together on Voyager.

She remembers them laughing together, chatting on the bridge as stars flashed by in front of them. Laughing and talking. Captain and First Officer. Normal.

She remembers him sitting beside her in meetings in Voyager’s conference room--calm, routine morning meetings, urgent crisis meetings, boisterous meetings on the day of a holiday when no one could stay serious for long. Meetings. Okay. Normal.

She can remember shooting pool with him, spending time together on the holodeck. All right, a little less formal than she was trained to be with her crew in command school, but within the bounds of normal social activities on a starship. But…

There are other times. Memories that are not normal at all.

She shivers. _How fierce would a battle have to be to cause Voyager’s dedication plaque to fall down?_

What happened during that battle, that she could not look her own first officer in the eye as, together, they hung the plaque back up again?

And there is another memory, a far more distant one. Walking to the cargo bay, telling Chakotay she couldn’t bear to leave anyone behind, only for him to rest a gentle hand on her shoulder in reassurance outside the doors.

Janeway shakes her head in frustration, trying to clear it, trying to understand. There was--is--something very wrong with with her ship. With Voyager. Why would her crew want to leave their ship? Why would she not want them to, yet also allow them to? Is Voyager not a Federation starship? But… She shakes her head again. The simulated headache is worsening, a familiar tension in her neck and stabbing pain behind her eye. _But Voyager_ is _a Federation starship._

She can remember soaking in a bathtub full of warm, soapy water, in...in the woods? Why was there a bathtub in a forest and why was she relaxing in it and _why_ was Chakotay, her first officer, there, trying hard not to look at her as she wrapped a towel around herself and…

Nothing makes sense. Not her memories of Seven and Unimatrix Zero and fighting the Borg without backup, but without mourning some cataclysmic event that utterly destroyed the Federation. Not her clear recollection of offering to allow crewmembers to leave Voyager on a random planet, as though it was a colony ship instead of a Starfleet exploration vessel staffed with a Starfleet crew. Not splashing around in a bathtub in the forest, with no one in hearing distance except her Starfleet first officer. Except…

She frowns, staring around Chakotay’s environment. It might not solve the bathtub question, but some knowledge is nudging undeniably against her mind: _Chakotay isn’t Starfleet…_

She shakes her head again, helplessly, as though that will clear it. _Of course he is._ In her memories, many memories, there he is, wearing his command uniform, attending meetings in Voyager’s very Starfleet briefing room, sitting on Voyager’s bridge by her side…

He is Starfleet.

But he isn’t.

But he is.

And Seven was Borg. But then she was human. And instead of being taken back to the safety of Federation space to reclaim her human identity, she was doing it on the fly, with only one doctor and no counselor to help, on Voyager.

Janeway groans, rubbing her temples.

 _What the_ hell _was going on on my ship?_

Stepping out of the ring, she paces to the wall, then to the ring, then to the wall again.

 _Chakotay._ She stares into the empty space in front of her, watching dust motes dance in the sunlight. _Just think of Chakotay._

She can remember his hand on her shoulder, his presence by her side as he confirmed over and over, in words and through his actions, that he was with her and she did not have to lead Voyager alone. His voice, gentle or upbeat or bored or angry, talking to the crew, talking to her, calling her Capt...

No. _Not_ calling her Captain.

Janeway freezes, the memory enveloping her. Chakotay’s warm voice, again and again, laughing with her, arguing with her, calling her...

_Kathryn._

A word, a name, seven letters, two syllables.

_Kathryn._

She tests the sound of it on her tongue.

“Kathryn.”

Her soft voice is loud in the silence. The name flows naturally from her lips, as familiar as her own face.

_My name is Kathryn._

Kathryn presses a hand against the wall, sinking to her knees.

_My name is Kathryn, and in my earliest memories my mother says my name like a caress and my sister whines Kattryn because she is too little to form the “th” sound, and once I loved a man who called me Kath with all the familiarity of a gentle arm slung around my shoulders, and then the only person who called me Kathryn didn’t need a nickname because being the only one to call me by my given name was familiarity enough._

Slowly, she gets back to her feet, bruised limbs and stiff joints protesting.

“I am Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Federation Starship Voyager,” she tells the empty gymnasium.

With each word, her voice grows stronger, the familiar words rolling from her tongue as they did time and time again as she stood in front of Voyager’s viewscreen, meeting new people from new civilizations, announcing her identity to the universe.

_I am Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Federation Starship Voyager._

_Yes._

_I am._

 

The gym refuses to tell her much more about Chakotay or the past or herself, but Kathryn wanders around it aimlessly, deep in thought.

She knows, she thinks, so much about herself. Her gender. Her full name. Her role and career, first as a scientist, then, as she moved forward through the years, a first officer-- _Commander,_ Tuvok had called her in the desert memory--and finally, unlikely though it might feel to her now, the captain of a starship.

But she doesn’t yet have the answers she most needs in order to know her whole past and whole self. And, according to B’Elanna’s recording, without remembering one’s whole past and identity, there is no way to open the side portal that will lead to the control room and enable her to get them all out.

_What was Voyager’s mission?_

_What was happening out there, before we were trapped here? What were we doing among the real stars, out in the reality of space?_

As in Seven’s sparkling cove, there is no looming boundary wall, only a familiar metal door in the far side of the room--admittedly less incongruous here than in any one of the other environments, but recognizable nonetheless. Kathryn walks toward it.

She has her name. She has a few more of her memories. She has her crew’s names; their personalities; their pasts and their quirks and their faces. And she has her love for them.

_But I don’t have all of it back yet._

_I want all of it._

_I want myself back._

_I want my memories, and I want the context at their edges._

_I want answers._

Turning around, Kathryn looks once more around the gym, at the empty ring and the motes of dust dancing through the long beams of sunlight. This is the place that gave her back her name--or more accurately, Chakotay is the person who has done so--and for that, she can’t help but give his simulated environment a silent nod of thanks.

Naomi and Seven have given her back her role, Chakotay and B’Elanna her name. The Doctor’s environment reminded her what she was, Tuvok brought back her first full memory from reality, and Harry gave her back the beginning of her knowledge of her crew.

Her fierce love for all of them swells in her chest.

_It’s time for me to return the favor now, and get us all back to reality alive and well._

_After all...I’m the captain._

Turning back to the door, Janeway opens it without hesitation, stepping from the spare sunlit gym into a dark and carpeted hush.


	10. The Theatre

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are...third-to-last update! Thanks so much to everyone reading. <3 Writing this fic has been such a fun and challenging experience, and I hope to publish the final five chapters some time in the next few weeks.
> 
> Important content warning: This chapter, and the rest of the fic, deals heavily with Janeway's depression and trauma as well as her self-destructive and suicidal tendencies. Please take care if this is a topic that is difficult or triggering for you. <3
> 
> Spoilery chapter-specific content warnings in the middle of the six lines of stars...  
> *  
> *  
> *  
> Content warnings:  
> \- References to a lot of the bad things that happen in canon, including deaths of side characters, Janeway's father's death, the death of Seven's "child" in "Drone," Janeway torturing Noah Lessing, depression and self harm, illness, injury  
> \- Brief food mentions  
> \- Fire  
> \- Mentions of B'Elanna's pregnancy  
> *  
> *  
> *

Janeway lets the door close gently behind her. The space in front of her is long and wide, although it is not nearly as big as the echoing gymnasium. Rows of red cushioned seats face the wide screen that takes up the full opposite wall, and Janeway smiles slightly. _Tom. Of course._

Her smile falls from her face, however, as she thinks of Tom--his cynical chuckle, his dogged optimism--buried with the rest of the crew, hidden in layers of code. Janeway’s arms snake around her torso in spite of herself as she wonders what it feels like, to be a consciousness without a body.

Pushing the morbid rumination from her thoughts, she focuses on the present. She can feel Tom’s presence here, at least, and that feeling is a good one. Slowly, she has gotten to know her crew again. And by finding the final answers about their shared past, she can win against this program and bring them all safely back to reality. _You’re getting there, Kathryn. Just keep going._

A few grains of popcorn crunch under her feet as she pads down the carpeted aisle. Halfway to the screen, she comes to a halt, turning in a slow circle to admire the faded glory of the simulated old-fashioned theatre.

Unlike Harry’s simulated city, or Tom’s holodeck theatre back in reality, this environment has no simulated patrons, merely rows upon rows of empty seats, with an occasional abandoned cup of soda or bag of popcorn amid the rows. And unlike B’Elanna’s and Seven’s environments, it contains no obvious sources of information--no recordings or notes, or, indeed, any objects at all besides the architectural features and the detritus of past snacks.

Well, this _is_ a theatre. Maybe there will be a show.

Turning, Janeway lowers herself into the nearest aisle seat. Her simulated body is grateful for the rest, and she closes her eyes for a moment.

As she opens them, the house lights go down.

For a moment, the theatre is cloaked in darkness. Then there is a slight change in the texture of the blackness of the screen, and all at once it is displaying a starfield, points of white light moving slowly from the center towards the edges of the screen as the viewer’s perspective moves forward through the stars.

A high note chimes, then another, slightly lower one, then another, the chiming notes blending into an anticipatory harmony as a deep voice begins, “Space. The final frontier.”

A measured, proud horn introduction hovers in the air as, all at once, a silver starship shoots across the starfield toward the viewer, zooming away just as quickly and disappearing into the center of the screen.

“These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise.”

All at once, Kathryn Janeway is six years old again, snuggled on the couch beside her father and sister in her pajamas on a Saturday morning, watching the dramatized adventures of Starfleet’s most famous--some might say notorious--historical captain.

“Its five-year mission: To explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations.”

She’d had a teddy bear, Captain Tribble, and he always watched with them. She would smooth the fur away from his eyes and prop him in her lap so that he had a clear vantage point of the old-fashioned screen. Several years later, when she had finally gotten big enough to be allowed to play a children’s Enterprise holonovel at the public holodeck, he would ride on her back in a pack she’d sewn herself as she ran through the halls of the legendary starship or raced the clock on timed ‘away missions’ to oversaturated holo-landscapes.

“To boldly go where no one has gone before!”

Janeway’s eyes grow misty as the theme song continues. She can remember the way it felt to watch Captain Kirk’s adventures, curled up against her father the Starfleet captain, and feel like she was a part of something bigger, a force for good that had begun years before her life and would last many years after it.

She had been determined that she, Kathryn, was going to grow up to be a part of Starfleet.

And she had.

On the screen, Captain Kirk crosses the bridge to Lieutenant Uhura’s station. “Any response from the Melurians, Lieutenant?”

“Nothing since their original distress call, sir.” Frowning in concern, Uhura turns back to her station.

“What about the Federation science team working there? Dr. Manway had a special transponder.”

Watching the familiar faces and voices of the actors on the screen is comforting, like recieving a warm hug. But as glad as Kathryn is to be reminded of this scrap of childhood memory, the Enterprise is not the ship she is currently concerned about. _Watch a little more,_ she tells herself, _see if it jogs anything, then get up and find the door into the next environment._ And hope that that environment can supply her with the answers she so longs to receive about her own crew and their mysterious mission.

“I don’t suppose we could get caught up on voyages of the Starship Voyager,” she mutters under her breath, settling deeper into her seat.

She is not expecting the words to have any effect.

But no sooner has she finished speaking than the screen flickers, the picture of Kirk’s Enterprise vanishing. Janeway sits bolt upright in her chair again, staring at the screen.

There is a moment of staticky stillness, and then, all at once, she is looking at a different scene entirely.

The bridge of this starship is different--cool grays and blacks, with the same basic configuration but more space between the command center and the surrounding consoles. Crewmembers in modern uniforms stand at attention at their stations, and in the center of the bridge...Janeway stares at her onscreen counterpart, throat dry. The woman on the screen is unmistakably her. Younger, cleaner, dressed in a full uniform, and with long hair tied up in a bun, but obviously, indubitably her.

Kathryn watches as her younger self walks between the helm and the engineering station, addressing the crew. “We’re alone. In an uncharted part of the galaxy.”

She remembers the drawing in Naomi’s environment, Naomi and Samantha and another uniformed woman with red hair piled high. Unconsciously, Janeway reaches back to run her hand through her short, dirty hair. _That was me._

On the screen, Janeway walks from the engineering station to cross in front of Kes and Neelix, standing at attention to the right of the command chairs. “We’ve already made some friends here...and some enemies.”

Janeway watches the screen, not moving a muscle. _We have no idea of the dangers we’re going to face._ The memory of the words seeps into her consciousness, and she holds her breath as her younger self continues.

Turning as she walks, the younger Kathryn addresses the operations staff at the rear of the bridge. “We have no idea of the dangers we’re going to face.”

The memories of this day are flooding her now, and Kathryn wraps her arms around herself again, digging her nails into her arms as sounds and images merge with memory.

Resting her hands on the rail in front of Harry and Ayala, her onscreen counterpart continues, “But one thing is clear--both crews are going to have to work together if we’re to survive.”

_And they did. We did._

“That’s why Commander Chakotay and I have agreed that this should be one crew: a Starfleet crew.”

_Chakotay. Who had not been Starfleet for some time, but then, on Voyager, once again chose to be._

“And as the only Starfleet vessel assigned to the Delta Quadrant, we’ll continue to follow our directive to seek out new worlds and explore space.”

Even though, over the past half minute, memories have already risen from inside her to drop the sickening truth into her mind, the words still hit like a punch to the gut.

_The Delta Quadrant._

_Oh, god, no. No._

“But our primary goal is clear. Even at maximum speeds, it would take seventy-five years to reach the Federation. But I’m not willing to settle for that. There’s another entity like the Caretaker out there who has the ability to get us there a lot faster. We’ll be looking for her, and we’ll be looking for wormholes, spatial rifts, or new technologies to help us.”

In her seat in the theatre, Janeway closes her eyes.

_No. Please. No._

“Somewhere, along this journey, we’ll find a way back.” Her past self’s voice is strong and warm and gentle, everything the captain of a stranded starship should be.

Behind her eyelids, Janeway watches, again and again, as the Caretaker’s array explodes, burning orange and yellow and white before fading into so much smoke.

“Mr. Paris, set a course...for home.”

As Tom turns to confirm the order, the screen flickers, and the picture changes.

Kathryn’s six-years-younger self is standing with Tuvok, Harry and B’Elanna in Voyager’s transporter room. A word from Tuvok stops her from leaving to tell the crew that their messages had reached their families. The Romulan officer they had reached through the wormhole had died four years before.

As B’Elanna places a hand on Harry’s shoulder, Janeway sinks lower in her theatre seat, tears sliding down her cheeks.

The screen flickers again.

Janeway's younger self is walking down the hallway outside Voyager’s sickbay, her eyes haunted. Watching, Janeway does not need to be reminded of what has just happened inside sickbay’s walls.

Tuvix. One life for two. An impossible choice.

_Flicker._

On a barren, volcanic planet, the crew of Voyager drinks water sieved through a dead man’s uniform. Ensign Wildman’s baby, her replacement baby, is dying for a second time. In the theatre, Kathryn’s arms curl more tightly around herself as she remembers standing watch as the cold cut into her like a knife; letting the pain remind her of what her crew would suffer if she did not see them safely through this.

_Flicker._

In sickbay, Chakotay and Janeway pace around each other, anger flaring in the wake of Janeway’s choice to make a deal with the Borg.

 _No._ Janeway rocks back and forth in her seat, arms still clenched around her. _No. I didn’t want this. I don’t want these memories. No. Please…_

_Flicker._

Kneeling over a crewmember on the floor of the bridge, desperate CPR giving way to helpless silence as the Doctor tells her it’s too late, she’s too late, the woman lying in front of her will never open her eyes again.

_Flicker._

A funeral. Another funeral. A third funeral. The crew standing at attention for their lost colleague one last time. _No. Oh, god, no._ Innocent crewmembers laid to rest in space, one after another after another.

_Flicker._

Stillness. Silence. The bridge is empty, save for Harry lounging in the captain’s chair with his clarinet, and _no, no, please, you don’t need to show me this. I remember. I remember the Void. I remember how I broke down. I remember how I failed._

_Flicker._

The death of Seven’s son. B’Elanna breaking her own body to try to feel her depression and grief. An invasion from another dimension that Janeway had helped to bring about herself with her own floundering, stupid stupidity. _Flicker. Flicker. Flicker._ B’Elanna’s eyes boring into Kathryn’s, her anger at having her medical directives ignored coming to rest like a wall between them.

Kathryn presses her hands against her eyes. But the sound is still booming out of the speakers, battles and collisions and shouts. Her voice calling out the command to fire on Tom Paris’s shuttle as he disobeyed orders on the Monean water world.

_Flicker._

Giving up, Kathryn uncovers her eyes, watching dully as her onscreen counterpart presses her lips against Kashyk’s. She feels sick.

_Flicker._

The images of the Equinox disaster blare in front of her, rekindling her remembered fury at Ransom for making every principle she’d tried to live by into a joke, and simultaneously renewing her anguish over what that fury had led her to do.

Firefights. Ultimatums. A final explosion in the darkness.

“Stop,” she whispers into the darkness of the theatre. “Stop…”

But the images do not stop, they cannot stop, because they are on the screen and they are in her mind and after all, Noah Lessing couldn’t tell her to stop when she tortured him for the location of his captain. None of her crew could tell her to stop when she destroyed the Array and stranded them in the darkness of space, a lifetime away from home.

This is her life. This is what she’s done. This is who she is.

This is that precious answer she has been fighting so hard to remember.

_Flicker._

Tom’s kidnapping, Tuvok’s brain damage, the waking of the Vaadwaur. Kathryn stares blankly at the screen. After all she has seen and everything she has remembered, it feels almost anticlimactic to watch the mutilation of her own and Tuvok and B’Elanna’s bodies as they go undercover to deal a blow against the Borg. Tears slip down her face again, though, as she watches B’Elanna learn that she and her unborn child have been exposed to a deadly Klingon illness, and the pain does not ease with the memory of B’Elanna and her daughter being cured.

_Flicker._

More recent memories, now, are playing across the screen. The simulation. Kathryn and B’Elanna working together, shuffling papers and making notes on the train as Voyager crew bustled between the simulated compartments. The bulge of B’Elanna’s stomach is clearly visible as she leans over the workbench, recording her final message to Tom before hurrying away after the others.

Pregnant. B’Elanna is pregnant. And her captain’s choices got her trapped here, in this simulation. A cold wave of horror washes through Kathryn. She feels frozen. She needs to throw up, to pass out, to explode, to stop knowing this and feeling this and being this. _No. No. Please no._

But the theatre does not stop, and on the screen, she rests her hand on B’Elanna’s shoulder. “We’re almost there.” Looking into the younger woman’s eyes as they stand outside another simulated boundary door, Janeway tells her, “I’ll get us out of this. I promise.”

_I’ll get us out of this._

_Set a course....for home._

There is a terrible feeling growing in her stomach, the scenes she has just watched and her memories and a certain dark knowledge inside her pushing dread into her throat, and all at once, she knows. She knows.

The screen changes. Darkness. Smoke.

_No. Please. No._

But she knows.

The woman on the screen is blurred, seen from a distance through growing plumes of smoke. Stone walls are crumbling around her as she frantically works at crumpled control panels, splicing together wires and pushing at melting buttons as she glances at the color code written in harsh black letters on her arm.

_The control room, the side door..._

_We already made it to the control room. The plan worked._

_And then I failed._

_And we were trapped here, trapped in broken code._

_Except for me. Because I was in the control room. And so I was flung back again to the environment where I was first supposed to be._

On the screen, her red and black jacket is gone, and ash coats her face, her arms, her hair as she works faster and faster. But her work is to destroy this place, and as her plan succeeds she cannot keep pace with the destruction around her.

_No. No. Please, god, no..._

She is trembling, arms wrapped around herself in the cool of the theatre as her earlier self’s fingers blister and burn in the inferno, her hair scorching and burning as the control room collapses around her. The fire grows and the wires melt under her hands until she slumps to the ground, ash-gray hair falling over her face.

_We already made it as far as we could._

_There was one more battle to fight._

_And I fell._

_And I failed._

On the screen, her earlier self lies unconscious for a few moments more, until the scene fades away to blackness.

In her chair, Janeway wraps her knees into her chest, rocking back and forth, shaking her head as though denial will make any difference at all.

_That’s why they’re trapped in the code._

_That’s why I was deposited in the garden. My simulated body died in the control room, and so I was brought back to life, my worst injuries healed, but with the letters still on my arms and the ash still in my hair from…_

She can hardly make herself think the words.

_From the first escape attempt._

All of this has already happened. They made it to the end of their mission, even with the increasing memory loss, even racing against time and the growing loss of identity, with letters marked on her arms to remember the basic directions for her final part of the mission, and…

_And I failed._

She is sobbing now, choking out her anguish in helpless, undignified wails.

She has her memories back. She has her identity back. She has everything she wanted. And she would not wish this on anyone.

_I was their Captain._

_And I failed them._

_Again._

She failed, and her crew were buried alive. Buried in lines of code, caught in this simulation forever--

_No. Not forever. I won’t allow it._

The brief spark of defiance pulls her to her feet. But no sooner has she stood than another wave of grief hits her, and she sinks to her knees in the carpeted aisle. Too many memories are pouring into her, a lifetime of knowledge flooding her mind so quickly her head spins and her heart aches. Each moment brings a new pinpoint of grief.

Her father’s death, the disaster on the Billings, every mission gone wrong, every failure, every argument with someone she loved parades in front of her eyes, remembered of old and also, in its own way, new.

Another keening wail escapes her. The pain is too much. There is too much. She does not know how she will hold it, not for another second, not for another breath. But she does, again and again, and it hurts, and it hurts, and it hurts.

 

Eventually, Kathryn is able to think of nothing for a while. Not meditating the way Tuvok-- _oh, Tuvok_ \--would instruct, but staring ahead, only half-present, her mind floating in dull grey nothingness. She is not sure how long she stays there--twenty minutes, half an hour--but then the pain comes back again, and she whimpers, trembling. Each memory is too much. Each horror is too much. And through it all, her mind is reminding her that, after all, this is exactly what she deserves.

She did these things. She let these things happen. To herself, to her loved ones, to the people under her protection.

She is weak.

She is powerless.

She is corrupt, and powerful, and monstrous.

“Please.” She doesn’t know who she is pleading with. “Please please pleaseplease please, please, please, please…”

Her words mash together, and she is crying again, dry-eyed, her body shaking as she curls more tightly into a ball on the dirty carpet. Eventually, her eyelids droop as she sobs, and her sobs fade into even breathing. The screen looms over her, dark and silent, as Kathryn sleeps too deeply for dreaming.

 

When she wakes, it takes her a few muzzy moments to remember where she is. She peers through puffy eyes at the carpet in front of her, then the base of a chair, then--

_No._

The pain is back.

_Oh, please, no._

_I don’t want this._

_I don’t want to be this monster that I am._

_I don’t want to remember._

Peeling herself up from the carpet, Janeway wraps her arms around her knees. The pain is physical, an ache deep inside her, and she rocks back and forth, trying to comfort herself.

 _Kathryn. Shhh, shh, shh._ Her own voice in her mind is a gentle caress, trying to soothe herself back to normal, as she does whenever she hurts and there is no real other person to comfort her. _Listen, Kathryn, you’ve done plenty of good things. You’re not a monster. Shh. It’s okay. Think of all the_ good _things you’ve rediscovered. You have a crew you love, and you’ve led them safely through battles and disasters. You have a family you love. You’ve had a long career; you’ve cared for others, you’ve explored new worlds, and you’ve saved lives._

She is beginning to sob again as she rocks back and forth. _Not enough. Not enough. How could it ever compare? How could it ever add up? You. Have. Killed. Them._

A cry of pain escapes her, buried in her knees. _Cabit. Jetal. Ballard. You didn’t save them all. Not even close. How many people have you killed? On Voyager? Before? How many times have you failed?_

Tears of guilt and grief roll down her cheeks. _And now you sit crying. Crying like a little girl! As though that helps anyone. You’re pathetic. You know that, don’t you? Pathetic. How could you blame this simulation for what it took from you, when you let it all rot away yourself?_

The simulation.

She looks around furtively, wearily.

_Right. I need to get up. So I can save the crew. Before I…_

She closes her eyes, hunching into herself.

_Forget._

She breathes in and out, rough and shuddering.

_If I stay here...if I do nothing…_

_I will forget._

A distant part of her brain is screaming at her, telling her she is a monster for even considering failing her crew yet again. But the pain flooding her is too great, an ocean of pain, a tidal wave of pain, and...

_I could forget._

_I could leave it all behind._

_Just...let my mind fade away._

It takes her ten seconds before the screaming guilt roars louder than the whisper of defeat.

_No. I can’t let my crew down._

She takes another deep, shuddering breath. Tries not to think about how peaceful it was, existing blank and empty in the garden, with no pain and no shame and no guilt resting on her shoulders as her empty, faded self walked up the garden path.

_No._

_I cannot give up._

_No matter how much it hurts._

_Because I’m not doing this for me. I’m doing this for them._

She shudders. _Them._ So many lives already lost. So many lives already ruined, all because of her. And even here, now, in this very simulation, she has already failed once.

_What makes you think you can succeed this time?_

_Because I have to._

But the pain is still shuddering through her, a different memory from her restored mind pounding at her each instant. _Do they even want someone as monstrous as me coming to save them? How could they ever want to see me again?_

_Knowing all I’ve done, everything broken and rotten and monstrous inside me, how do I face them? How do I face myself? How did she do it, my past self, each day?_

Now she finally knows what B’Elanna meant when she said getting someone ready to face a side portal was more difficult than expected. Hours ago, Kathryn stood in Chakotay’s gym, eagerly scooping up returning memories, certain that she wanted it all back.

 _But nobody...nobody could_ ever _want this._

Another wave of memory hits her as she tries to stand, and Kathryn sinks back to the floor. The dimness of the theatre folds around her, her mind floating again in the grey dullness beyond pain and memory and identity.

Time floats by as Kathryn lies curled on the carpet. She must get up. She knows that. She will get up, as she has always done, and she will go forward until she can walk back into the black smoke of the inferno and save the people who have no one but her left to save them. She will do it, because she must.

 _Get up,_ she tells herself. But she can’t move.

_I am a monster._

_How will the universe possibly let me save them, when I’m the one who ruined their lives and got them trapped in the first place--first in the Delta Quadrant, and now here in this soul-eating hell?_

The tears begin again, and once more she rocks back and forth helplessly, memory after memory crashing onto the shore of her consciousness until she cannot breathe. She cannot think, she cannot stand, she can only lie on a floor that does not exist and weep.

 

She is not sure, afterwards, if the couple is some half-remembered ghost of this environment itself, or a creation in her own mind as she wakes from dreaming.

From the corner of the theatre, they walk to the corner in front of the screen, holding hands and laughing together as though they are the only two people in the universe.

Shadowed against the dark screen in the dim light, B’Elanna leans delicately forward, stopping Tom’s laughter with a kiss. He kisses her back for several seconds, and as they break apart, B’Elanna touches her lips lightly to his cheek, sealing the kiss with another kiss. Gently, Tom presses a hand against B’Elanna’s swollen stomach, then wraps his arms around her, leaning his forehead against hers.

And behind them, the screen flickers to life.

The cool grey walls of Janeway’s ready room frame a much younger Tom, looking just as he did in that first scene the theatre showed her. Janeway’s hair is back in its bun, and her eyes are tired but bright.

“I’ve entered into the ship’s log on this date that I’m granting a field commission of Lieutenant to Thomas Eugene Paris.” Tom is blinking at her in shock, arms still crossed, his devil-may-care attitude of moments before draining out of him before his posture has a chance to catch up. As Janeway finishes speaking, his mouth moves several times, but his astonishment prevents any words from making it out.

“Congratulations,” she continues, breaking character to smile broadly at him as she extends her hand. Tom shakes it, looking like he’s moving through water, and he gets through another few attempts at speech before he finally manages, “Um, for the first time in my life, I don’t know what to say.”

“You’ve earned this, Tom.” She grins back at him. “I’m only sorry your father won’t know.”

“Oh, he’ll know.” As they head for the door, Tom turns meet her gaze. “When we get back.”

_Flicker._

Warmth and light spill from the holodeck as Janeway walks into Tom’s first holoprogram. Crewmembers lounge around Sandrine’s, talking and laughing, and even Tuvok is there, standing with pool cue in hand, watching without comment as Janeway convinces half her senior staff of her supposed ineptitude at the game.

_Flicker._

Wordlessly, Janeway opens her arms, and Kes flings herself into them. Her eyes are squeezed shut, and Kathryn rocks her, back and forth, rubbing her back, before they begin to talk, starting to plan how Kes will make the best decision for herself.

_Flicker._

On the screen, Kathryn sits beside Tuvok, journeying with him through the pain of a memory virus as the Doctor designs the cure that will save him for good.

In the theatre, Kathryn pulls herself to a sitting position, leaning against the base of the nearest seat, watching the memories unfold.

_Flicker._

In the shimmering green light of Cargo Bay 2, Seven of Nine, newly parted from the Borg, quietly tells Janeway, _The child you spoke of, the girl. Her favorite color was red._

_Flicker._

Chakotay and Janeway argue, the intensity in his eyes and the compassion in his words finally convincing her to bring Voyager with her as she executes the Omega Directive.

_Flicker._

Naomi and Samantha Wildman walk hand-in-hand into the magical forest full of flowers, ready to play with the holodeck characters after Samantha’s brush with death, while Janeway walks Neelix out of the holodeck, his own demons quieted.

_Flicker._

Stirring on her biobed, B’Elanna reaches out, pulling herself into Kathryn’s arms after her journey on the Barge of the Dead.

_Flicker._

The Voyager crew drops a warning buoy at the site of a long-ago massacre, so that no one else will be taken unawares by invasive flashbacks as they were, but anyone who consents will be able to access the memorial that ensures the atrocity and its victims are remembered.

_Flicker._

With an away team on a Borg vessel and the rest of the crew fighting from the ship, Voyager and her Borg allies use Unimatrix Zero to strike a blow against the Collective; a blow that will change things, maybe for good.

Slowly, Kathryn rises to her feet. She feels lightheaded, and her breaths are still coming in hiccups as her wild sobs fade. But warmth is flowing back into her limbs as the screen flickers once final time and fades to black.

_That was Voyager._

_That was the crew. That was...me._

_What I helped create. What I protected. Even imperfectly._

She is smiling now, through her tears. The guilt of failing the people she loves was a feeling of love, yes, in a way--or her mind had convinced her it was; that that was the only version of love that she needed--but it had blotted out the feeling of loving them utterly, from the depths of her heart.

_My crew. My family._

_I love you._

Taking a deep breath, Kathryn tucks her hair behind her ears.

_I love you. I love you. I love you._

She glances back to the front of the room, to the place where, a few minutes ago, the echoes of Tom and B’Elanna and their family stood.

_And I’m going to complete this mission. I’m going to see you again._

She smiles, the fullness of her memory resting quietly in her mind, all the pain and all the love and all the memories. _I’m here. I’m whole._

_And that means I’m nearly there. I’m prepped, and I’m ready to go on._

There is a familiar metal door at the front of the theatre, in an alcove to the left of the screen. Kathryn pads down the aisle and along the front of the screen, combing her fingers through her grimy hair and taking a deep, shuddering breath.

_Let’s do this._

A narrow beam of warm light falls into the theatre as she opens the door, shining across the carpet and the toe of her shoe. As she opens the boundary door wider, the air from the other side reaches her nose, and she bites back a disbelieving grin at the rich, familiar aroma.

A final memory ghosts across her mind: herself, in the captain’s chair, grinning around at the bridge crew, then at the view outside her starship. _There’s coffee in that nebula._

Wiping a final tear that leaks from her eye as her hiccuping breaths calm, Kathryn steps forward through the doorway.


	11. The Starship

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specific content warnings in the middle of the six lines of stars...  
> *  
> *  
> *  
> Content warnings: food, fire, brief mention of war  
> *  
> *  
> *

Kathryn can feel the hum of the warp core through the soles of her boots as she steps into a perfect replica of Voyager’s mess hall. The warm overhead lights fall on the tables and chairs, tidily pushed in for the night. Through the viewport, she can see the rhythmic flash of passing stars.

There is a pot of coffee on the counter, the warm, rich aroma of its steam filling the air. Crossing the room towards it, Kathryn reaches for a mug, filling it to the brim before bringing it to her lips.

She smiles.

Her hiccuping breaths have quieted, but she still has the spent, drained feeling that comes after a long cry. The sensation is familiar, but long forgotten; with her newly whole memory, she tries to think back to the last time she has cried this hard. Years, if not decades.

Aside from the familiar hum under her feet, the mess hall is silent and peaceful, just like it is whenever she drops by in the middle of gamma shift.

Standing here at the counter of the mess and gazing out at the peaceful space after fighting her way through the hell of the past environments, it somehow hits home to her in a way it never has before what it would be like to be in Neelix’s shoes these past six years. Born onto a world that was senselessly destroyed with a weapon of mass destruction, spending his adult life working his way up to having his own ship and eeking out a living as a scavenger in a brutal quadrant...and then, suddenly, becoming a part of Voyager, a clean and well-lit spaceship full of a multitude of alien species in crisp uniforms, holding onto the principles of a far-away interplanetary community and approaching all the danger and darkness of space with a fundamental sense of good faith.

As a Federation starship captain, Kathryn can see all too clearly every way in which Voyager lacks the resources of an ordinary Starfleet ship, and the way they have lacked the orders of Starfleet and the backup of the peaceful and principled United Federation of Planets. She can see all too clearly her own mistakes, and all the times she has let go, to one extent or another, of Starfleet’s guiding principles.

She has not always seen, perhaps, how remarkable it is for a ship like Voyager to exist in a brutal quadrant of an uncaring galaxy. To exist, and to survive.

Quiet, hesitant pride grows in her chest as she looks once again around the clean, well-lit mess hall. A realization nudges against her, just as it did as she watched the echoes of Tom and B’Elanna, grown and changed and healed in so many ways and preparing to start a family: _We have created something good. Something worthwhile. Something that is not the default, but painstakingly_ chosen _and created every minute._

_We have chosen who we were going to be. And now, I remember who it was that I am._

_I am Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Federation Starship Voyager. And despite everything rotten and lacking inside me, despite all my failings and all my mistakes, I have had a hand in creating this._

She feels lighter, listening to the soft, steady hum of Voyager’s engines, sipping the hot black coffee, and watching stars flash by outside.

_I know who I am._

As the words burn warm inside her, she sees a soft shimmer out of the corner of her eye. She turns, already knowing what she will see. There, in the side of the mess hall where only a flat wall exists in reality, is a new door.

Swallowing the rest of her coffee, Kathryn sets her mug firmly on the table and crosses over to it. Before reaching for the knob, though, she hesitates.

_Last time you tried to do this, you failed. What makes you think you’ll succeed this time?_

But the answer is there, implacable and unchanged by either her happiness or her grief: _Because I have to._

_Because I’m doing it for them._

Lifting her chin, Janeway pushes the door open.

_Because it’s time._

The fire that caught when she first stumbled upon this ruin has grown. Now it licks at nearly a quarter of the visible ruin, flames jumping higher than Kathryn’s head. Not real flames, though; she reminds herself matter-of-factly, nor can they hurt a body that isn’t real either. Her only enemy is time. The only way to beat that enemy is to not waste another second.

But she knows that the pain of the fire will be real, and she glances behind her once more, gathering strength from the simulated starship and all the environments behind it, drawing courage from what she has learned there.

She knows, now, who she is, who she was, who she has become, and why.

And she knows what is left for her to do.

The marks on her own arms, letters she once wrote in determination not to let her crew down, are faded but still clear.

     FOR VOYAGER  
     FOR NAOMI

Squaring her shoulders, Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Federation Starship Voyager strides forward into the inferno.


	12. The Inferno

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Second-to-last update! Just one chapter this time (it is the big one, after all ;) BUT I’m aaalmost done with Chapters 13-15 + epilogue, and can confidently commit to having them up by Sunday morning.
> 
> Thanks so much to everyone reading. <3 As ever, comments are deeply appreciated!
> 
> **Bringing forward the important content warning from Chapter 10:  
> This chapter, and the rest of the fic, deals heavily with Janeway's depression and trauma as well as her self-destructive and suicidal tendencies. Please take care if this is a topic that is difficult or triggering for you. <3
> 
> Additional content warnings in the middle of the six lines of stars...  
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> *  
> *  
> Content warnings:  
> \- Fire  
> \- Burns  
> \- Mention of background original character deaths  
> \- Mention of past temporary major character death  
> \- Angst  
> *  
> *  
> *

As she picks her way through the flames towards the center of the ruin, Kathryn yanks off her tank top, pulling one of the mildewed sweaters over her head in its place. Natural fibers are supposed to be flame resistant, aren’t they? The more advanced material of the Starfleet top she rips in half, wrapping the pieces around her hands before wrenching off the half-melted cover of the nearest control panel.

The faint voice of memory is telling her that in reality, under normal circumstances, most of these components would have already been melted by the heat. But this is not reality, and these are not normal circumstances.

She hopes.

Kathryn squints at the components under the panel. Yes, there are the wires, their casings slightly melted together, but still threaded neatly into their tangle of connections. Her hands hover over them for a moment as she thinks back to B’Elanna’s notes before she reaches down and begins to work. Connect purple to yellow and yellow to green...

Even as the makeshift gloves protect her hands from direct content with the plastic and metal, her wrists are reddening before her eyes, and the tips of her fingers scream in agony and then feel nothing at all. She hums against the pain, giving it voice to tame its hold over her.

The gaggle of purple wiring, threading into the board under the adjacent panel, is more melted together than the rest, perhaps thanks to the flames currently shooting higher and higher out of the piles of wreckage to the right of the second panel. Carefully, Kathryn tries to peel the needed wire away from the cluster, but as she picks at the stuck-together purple casing, several of the copper wires comes apart as well. There’s no way to twist them back together--no way to tell which end matched to which, or follow them to their source in this half-destroyed mess.

She nearly cries out in frustration, then clenches her jaw, staring at the wreckage in renewed determination. Fire takes hold of her hair, pain beyond words beginning to lick at the back of her neck, and she reaches back almost absent-mindedly to smother it.

This color code is written on her arm for a reason, dammit, and she will stay here until she saves the people she loves or dies a simulated death in this simulated inferno trying.

But she can’t let it come to that. The flames might not be real, but the ticking clock is, and her failure will still kill them all.

Kill all of… She shakes her head to clear it. _Of my crew. My crew._ Their faces are already blurring, and she fights panic, pushing it far away. _Do the job you came to do. Now. Before you forget._ She glances down at her arm. _For Voyager. For Naomi._

Fire is licking at the hem of her shirt, and she pats it out. Her head is starting to swim in the heat, everything around her growing wavy and distant, and the pain is as loud as a song in her ears. _It’s not real. It’s not real. It doesn’t matter how much it hurts you. Just finish the job. Now._

Shoving aside another piece of the control panel, she reveals a board of what seems to be mostly capacitors, not too badly damaged by the heat. Kicking open the taller cabinet next to it, she stares at the tangle of wiring, thinking over B’Elanna’s notes and trying to concoct a way forward, when suddenly--

Everything--

Stutters. It is as though the world, her body, her hearing and vision and thoughts, blink out of existence and back on again.

She stares around.

The pain is gone.

And the world is frozen.

The flames are crystallized, as silent and still as a holo-image. Coils of black smoke are pinned in place in the air. All around Kathryn, not a molecule is in motion. Nothing moves but her--not the control panels, not the air around her, and not the blasted landscape that extends, vast and uneven and grey, away into the smoke.

It shudders every once in a while, like the whole world is a bad ancient tape-recording.

From behind her comes the sound of a footstep.

Whipping around to crouch facing the opposite direction, not letting go of the melted wires, Kathryn stares at the person standing a dozen paces in front of her.

He is tall and lean, dressed in a clean black and gold uniform with a masculine cut, with ears that are pointed at the tip. He regards her impassively, hands folded behind his back as he takes another small step towards her.

“Who the hell are you?”

Her words grate out loud and harsh against the surrounding silence, and a minute trace of emotion finally flickers in the man’s eyes. She thinks she even sees his jaw tighten slightly, and she braces, prepared to spring up and defend herself.

But, if she had to put her finger on it, she would have to admit that the emotion in his eyes doesn’t appear to be anger, or disdain, or even fear.

If anything, he looks like he’s been slapped.

“I am Lieutenant Commander Tuvok.”

_Tuvok._

The memories flood back, an inrushing jumble.

“I know. I remember, now. I’m sorry. This place--”

“I am aware.”

With the memories of Tuvok comes what would have been her initial response to seeing him, in front of her, after all that has happened: Emotion surges through her, relief mingling with caution as her eyes fill with tears.

“Tuvok.” Her voice is hoarse. “Are you really here?”

Tuvok meets her eyes, not breaking her gaze as he slowly lowers himself to kneel in the ash in front of her. “I am here.”

“Where did you come from? Where are the others?”

Instead of answering, he asks her, “What are you doing?”

She stares at him. “Getting us out. Fixing this.” And losing time. She clutches the wires more tightly. “I retraced our steps through the simulation. I found the notes. I got back the memories. How we were going to open a side door, how we got all the way here before I failed, how to use the color code I wrote on my arms to try to get us out--”

There is a terrible expression in his eyes, but she does not understand it, or what emotion it is betraying. Pain. Understanding. Caution. Pity.

He is gazing at her as though she might break.

Finally he says, softly, “Why did you assume that you had failed?”

“What?” she whispers.

“If you succeeded in your mission, there would be no crewmembers still trapped in this simulation. As you have seen, this is the case.”

“I…” She shakes her head. “They…”

“Captain,” he says gently. “You did not fail. You succeeded. The crew is safe, and have already been freed from this program.”

“No.” She shakes her head again, numbly. “No. That...”

If is it possible, his voice grows even more gentle. “Captain. Kathryn. I know that this is unexpected information. But we are safe.” A pause, then he continues roughly, emotion visible once more in his eyes, “You were the only one who remained behind, to rewire the control room and make our escape possible, at the cost of your own memory and freedom.”

She is still shaking her head. “No. No! This is a trick. This is the simulation trying to fool me because I’m getting too close…”

He is silent for a long moment, watching her, pain obvious in his eyes.

“Get away from me,” she snarls. “You’re not Tuvok. You’re just another part of this simulation...just a trick…”

“There is nothing I can tell you that will prove that I am not a figment of this simulation,” he says, dipping his head slightly, “since it too has access to any command code or shared memory I might use to prove my identity. However, you are a scientist, capable of deductive reasoning. If you think back over your time in this environment, you--”

“Shut _up--_ ”

“--will be able to see that what I am saying holds up to evidence and logic.”

She is silent.

“Why _did_ you assume that you had failed?”

“The crew wasn’t…” She can feel herself trembling. “Wasn’t here…”

And now it seems obvious, the second option. If they had become trapped, they wouldn’t be here. But if they had escaped, of course they wouldn’t be here, either.

“I thought--I thought they were trapped somewhere...stored in some deeper part of the program…”

“With the data you had, this is not an unreasonable possibility. However, the nature of this program is to hold the minds of its inhabitants in their ideal environments until the time of their death. These environments _are_ where they would be stored,” he finishes gently, “if they were here.”

She shakes her head. What he says makes sense, but she can’t trust any information that comes from him. She thinks back.

“The theatre...what it showed me. It showed me the first time I tried to hotwire the control room. I passed out, I failed, I passed out for too long and my memory went away, and then the screen went dark…” The words rush from her mouth in a jumble, then stutter to a halt.

It _hadn’t_ actually shown her that she had failed, had it? It had shown her her earlier self, twisting wires together as her memory drained, then collapsing. She is the one who assumed that that meant she had not succeeded in her mission before falling unconscious. She is the one who assumed that the others did not get out.

“I thought that I was protected in the control room, that that was why I ended up back in the garden. But it was the other way around, wasn’t it?” she whispers at last. She is trembling harder now, her hands still gripping the melted wires as though she might still be able to find a purpose in them. “They were never going to be destroyed, not like that. They were going to stay and forget or, or escape...and then they _did_ escape and I…” Sweat and ash are dripping into her eyes, making them burn. She closes them. “Didn’t.”

“No,” says Tuvok softly. “You did not.”

“But--Naomi’s environment--the footprint on the drawing pad--the shattered doll--” Even as she speaks, however, the situation is coming into focus. There were no silver-eyed simulation inhabitants in Naomi’s forest, after all. The only grown-ups were…

Were real.

Were _them_.

“We had to prioritize Naomi’s safety,” Tuvok is explaining quietly, “when we finally accessed her environment. She was one of the last crewmembers to be found. Mr. Paris ran to scoop her up as soon as he saw her. You were there,” he adds, “as was I. Things had gone...not quite according to plan. The plan was working; offshoots of the program were opening so that we could begin sending people back to reality. But we hadn’t found the final crewmembers quickly enough. We were running out of time.”

Kathryn thinks of one of the first snatches of memory she recalled in Harry’s environment: Tom, his mouth a hard line, gripping her shoulder as she gripped his.

_I’ll take care of her. You go for the rest._

_Do it. And Tom--thank you._

She shakes her head in helpless defiance of the memory, of the pieces falling into place. “It can’t be...it…”

“We knew that once your identity had been erased, you would have no reason to leave the environment the simulation had originally created for you.” Tuvok dips his head briefly. “I am deeply grateful that that was not the case.”

“But I only did it because…” She lets the wires drop. “I’d seen the writing on my arms. I was searching for who you were. And once I remembered, I figured out what I needed to do. To gather all my memories, to save the crew…”

Tuvok watches her, silent and still.

“It’s already over, then.” She blinks, slowly, as it sinks in. “What I figured out I had to do…”

Tuvok completes the sentence. “You have already done.” His eyes bore into hers. “You agreed to lose everything for us, Kathryn--your life, your identity, your memories, your home, your self.”

“But--”

“And you did.”

She swallows. Her lips are dry, coated with dust and ash.

“I am more grateful,” says Tuvok roughly, “than I can express that your consciousness was able to return from that loss. As soon as you are extracted from this program, we will be able to destroy this satellite, so that no one can be harmed by it again.”

“Satellite?” She frowns. “So, we’ve been on a satellite. Who created this sadistic program, anyway?”

Tuvok hesitates a moment. “Not sadistic. Or, at least, that was not the creators’ intention.”

She twists her hands together in her lap, watching him.

“Over the period of time we have spent outside the program, we have become familiar with its workings and its...intended directive. This satellite was built by an unknown race many centuries ago. It appears that its purpose was to provide what we might refer to as hospice care to dying members of their civilization.”

Tuvok picks up a stone, rolling it around in his hand before letting fall back to the ground, where it generates a small puff of ashes. “When an individual was nearing the end of their life, if they were in pain, they were given the option of entering the simulation, where the program would read their mind and provide them with their ideal environment. To ease participants’ transition from their former lives, the program caused them to gradually forget their memories and, ultimately, their identities.

“Meanwhile, in their connection chamber, their physical body was gradually shut down. Their mind was kept alive by nanofilaments for several days after their death, until it, too, eventually faded away. In this way, it appears that the creators intended the program to give patients something combining hospice care and the beginning of an afterlife.”

“That…” Kathryn stares out into the smoke. “That’s why it made me forget. That’s why it thought I needed to be empty.”

Tuvok nods. “As well as providing ideal environments for its participants and gradually erasing their memories, the simulation was programmed to have a mild numbing effect. Apparently, it was intended to help its participants to forget and to help them not to care about what they had forgotten.”

She thinks of the way questions about herself and her past drifted across her mind in the garden, only for a wave of disinterest to sweep through after them.

“Whether or not one personally agrees with this culture’s philosophies around death and the end of life,” Tuvok continues, “one can understand why such a program would be built, and how it could be of use to willing participants at the end of their natural lives.

“Absent its creators, however, the sophisticated program began to use the satellite’s equally advanced hardware to subsume the unwilling.

“In the years after the satellite was abandoned, the program appears to have chosen to...extend the reach of its directive. Its purpose had been to ease the pain of living beings,” Tuvok finishes quietly. “And every living being is in some kind of pain.”

Kathryn stares at the frozen flames. “It captured Voyager.”

Tuvok nods. “Once we were within the pull of the satellite, our shields and propulsion were unable to counter its tractor beams or transporters. Without prior knowledge,” he adds, “there was nothing more we could have done. We were simply unlucky.”

She nods once, not trusting herself to speak.

“It appears that this satellite has been capturing and causing the deaths of passing crews for several centuries,” Tuvok continues. “The empty ships docked here come from a multitude of civilizations, and the oldest we have catalogued thus far was last active four hundred and thirty-seven years ago.”

“Ships,” she says sharply. “And bodies?”

“They remain,” he says, after a brief pause, “in the connection chambers in which they died.”

Kathryn presses her hand to her mouth, staring fixedly at the ground for a moment until she can speak again. “How many people has this place killed?”

Tuvok hesitates.

“How many?” she asks again.

He bows his head slightly. “Several thousand.”

Kathryn closes her eyes. Her grief for the simulation’s victims feels like an ache beneath her sternum, and for several moments she and Tuvok sit in silence, mourning people they have never known.

She thinks back to her anger as she made her way through B’Elanna’s and Seven’s environments, when she was still wrong in so many ways about the nature of this place, but also, in a way, correct.

It is cruel, and it is wrong, and it is deeply, terribly unfair.

As they sit in silence, a question bubbles up to the forefront of Kathryn’s mind, cutting through the haze of confusion and grief.

“How am I alive?” she asks flatly.

“What?” Tuvok’s head jerks up.

“How am I alive?” she repeats. “If I stayed behind to get everyone out, and the simulation slowly kills its participants, how am I alive? Why am I here?”

Tuvok hesitates. “I do not know. I thought that you might have that answer.” His voice is tight. “The--last time I saw you, I believed that I would not see you alive again.”

He looks as though he wants to elaborate, and Kathryn sits in silence, watching him.

“We were in the forest environment. The simulation had started to represent the beginning of our interference in its program with small fires throughout the environments, and we could see plumes of smoke over the treetops behind us as we walked in the direction of the control room.” Kathryn has the impression that, if he were human, Tuvok might be speaking very quickly, as though the pain he has experienced is something that needs to be told to whoever is there to listen. “As we walked, we found Naomi. Mr. Paris carried her out of her living space. After embracing her and instructing Mr. Paris to take her back to one of the offshoots behind us, you jogged towards the door to the control room.”

“I prepared to follow you to the door, where my task was to assist with any potential problems gaining entry. Before I left Naomi and Mr. Paris, I told Naomi that she would see you again when we all met back in reality. But Naomi yelled--” Tuvok’s voice is rougher than ever, carefully controlled. “That you had told her, when Seven had been kidnapped, that the captain of a starship never abandoned a member of their crew. She said that we--couldn’t abandon you.”

“I--instructed Mr. Paris to pick her up and go, and I left to follow you to the control room door.

“He later informed me that he instead told her she could leave something for you rather than remaining herself. They left one of her stuffed toys on her bed, and then they went.

“Meanwhile, I watched from the forest environment as the door to the control room closed behind you.

“Several minutes later, I woke up. As you hacked the program from within, the final members of the crew, both the remaining individuals we had gathered and those we had not yet ‘found,’ began to return to their real bodies.

“Once we were all back in reality, Lieutenant Torres and Ensign Kim and I began working on the program from the outside, trying to find a way to circumvent its safeguards against your removal. But we could not.” Tuvok pauses for several moments. “A few hours later, the Doctor pronounced you dead. Your body was kept alive by the microfilaments holding you to the network, but you had no brain activity that was not controlled by the simulation. Lieutenant Torres examined the place where your consciousness was stored by the network, and confirmed that your memories and identity had been...erased.

“Over the course of the next day, as we restored Voyager to working order, the crew continued trying new workarounds to restore your consciousness. Ensign Kim, Lieutenant Torres, and Seven of Nine dug deep into the simulation’s programming, the Doctor performed various experimental treatments, and I attempted a mind meld.” Tuvok’s voice is flat and quiet. “There was no mind left for me to reach. Your soul, your _katra,_ was...gone.

“We knew that the program would cause final brain death in several days’ time. We decided unanimously not to break orbit until that point.” He lowers his gaze, and for a moment, there is silence. “I was sitting with you, that night, when you began to breathe again. We still do not know why, or how.”

“I saw the letters on my arms,” she whispers. “I walked back through the door.”

Tuvok inclines his head. “Over the next day and a half, whatever it was that you were doing within the program caused your vital signs to grow stronger. Lieutenant Torres and the Doctor collaborated on a procedure to revive you if your consciousness became free of the simulation, and periodically I attempted a mind meld. Eventually, I began to sense your presence, but for the next few hours, you were still too distant, as though my mind was trying to reach yours through endless space.

“I waited until your readings abruptly became strong enough, a shift that you must have perceived within the simulation as…” He gestures around them. “Your entry, once again, into the simulation’s control space.” He raises an eyebrow. “I was not sure what either of us would perceive if I successfully joined you in the simulation. It seems that question has now been answered.”

“And now you’re here,” Kathryn says blankly. She is starting to feel as though she, for her part, is listening to Tuvok from a very long way away. Distantly, she surmises that the feeling has much less to do with further mental manipulation by the simulation, and much more to do with exhaustion and confusion and shock.

“Yes. I am here.”

“But you can leave whenever you like. You’re safe.” She clenches and unclenches her hands where they rest on her knees, letting out a long, shuddering breath. “You’re all safe. It’s over.”

“Yes, your time in this simulation is nearly over,” says Tuvok. “If the mind meld succeeded, as it has, it is likely that it will be possible for you to find a way for your consciousness to escape this program from within.”

“If you can get in, I can get out,” she echoes.

He nods. “That was the assessment made by Seven of Nine and Lieutenant Torres.”

“All right. I’ll have to...figure something out. Did B’Elanna or Seven have any hints?”

“I am afraid that they did not. They were not even sure how the simulation was currently appearing from within, or what the visual representation of the mind meld would be. B’Elanna’s advice to you was, ‘Whatever she hasn’t tried yet, tell her to do that.’” Tuvok glances away into the distance. “I wish that I was able to offer you more concrete information. However, I have every confidence that your resourcefulness and scientific reasoning will enable you to complete your escape.”

“But...if I can’t…” she says quietly.

Tuvok turns his head back sharply.

“If I can’t figure out a way out...it won’t hurt anybody else, right? The crew is already safe. No matter what. It’s over.”

Tuvok hesitates. “I believe that no one on this crew will consider this ordeal over until you are safely back on Voyager.”

“But they don’t _need_ me to do anything else. If I...can’t make it back, the crew is still safe. No matter what.” She rakes a hand absently through the ash by her side, then repeats her words, wanting Tuvok to confirm them. “They don’t need me to do anything else.”

For another long moment, he is silent.

She is just about to repeat the question again when he reaches out, laying his hand on the surface of the ash next to hers, much as he did on a flat rock in the Vulcan desert so many years ago. “Kathryn, we will always need you. And we will always want you.”

Kathryn stares blankly at their hands. The only thought that penetrates the fog of her exhaustion is that he has never called her Kathryn before.

But it’s different now, she supposes, as they kneel together sweaty and spent in a world that isn’t real, cradled in the final moments of Kathryn’s life.

Taking a ragged breath, she lifts her head, gazing around at the frozen landscape, the silent flames and unmoving columns of smoke. “It’s over,” she murmurs again.

As Tuvok is opening his mouth to respond, his whole body flickers, not just stuttering like the frozen landscape behind him does periodically, but disappearing for a fraction of a second and rematerializing again.

“It appears that we are reaching the limit of the effective meld, Captain.”

 _Captain._ It felt right, in its own way, to be addressed as Kathryn, but the more familiar form of address is soothing, a reminder that she is still a Starfleet officer on a mission.

“All right. Well, this isn’t the oddest situation we’ve been in.” Kathryn tries to inject a note of confidence into her voice. “I’ll figure this out.”

“I am sure that you will.” Tuvok glances behind him again, then back at her. “Farewell, Captain. I hope--with all my being--to see you soon.” He flickers again, then raises a hand, fingers forming a V, the thumb held apart. “Live--”

It is less that he fades away, and more like the landscape disappears in a brief burst of staticky nothingness--more than the landscape, her own thoughts, her own hearing and vision, her own self-awareness--and then judders back into existence without him. Where Tuvok sat there is only drifting ash.

Kathryn stares into the empty space. Her whole body is shaking lightly again, and she doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry or just curl up and sleep.

 _Adrenaline crash,_ she thinks. _My simulated body is have a simulated adrenaline crash. Who programmed this thing? Good grief._ She does laugh then, at the situation, at her own internal narration, at herself, but the laugh turns into a sob.

She has circumnavigated this world to figure out who she is, what happened to the vanished people, and what she must do about it. But none of it was correct, or more precisely, it was outdated information.

Who she is is the caretaker and protector of these people, but she has already protected them. What has happened to them was that they were stolen but, thanks to their efforts and her own, they have already escaped to safety.

What she thought she had to do, she has already done.

 _It’s over. I saved them. Already._ The relief hits her all at once, and dreamlike, her hands are slinging the pack from her shoulders, undoing the fastens and pulling Naomi Wildman’s blue stuffed creature into her arms. A choking sob is buried in his squashy cyan head. _My whole quest to learn who I was...who they were...what happened to them..._

_It was after the real quest had already ended. I just didn’t know that anymore._

B’Elanna’s words, then Tuvok’s, echo in her ears.

_The longer you stay here, the more you lose._

_You agreed to lose everything for them, Kathryn--your life, your future, your home, your memories, your self._

_And you did._

“It’s over,” she murmurs, as though hearing the words aloud will finally let them sink in. “You saved them. They’re safe. They’re safe.”

Several meters behind her, the end of a burned-out panel breaks off and hits the ground with a _thump_ , making her jump slightly. Wiping her eyes, Kathryn looks up, staring around the empty, smoldering environment.

“What happens after this?”

But she knows. It’s already happened.

Slowly, Kathryn rises to her feet and walks away from the place where she and Tuvok knelt, until she is standing in front of the inner door, which she did not have time to read when she first stumbled through it in a whirlwind of ash. It is marked simply:  
  
     EXIT  
  
The first door opens at her touch. So does the second.

Tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, Kathryn Janeway steps out into an overgrown garden in front of a crumbling observatory, which stands on a bluff overlooking a simulated sea.


	13. The Grey

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Complete!  
> Thanks so much to everyone reading! <3 More author’s notes after the epilogue.
> 
> **Bringing forward the important content warning from Chapter 10:  
> This chapter, and the rest of the fic, deals heavily with Janeway's depression and trauma as well as her self-destructive and suicidal tendencies. Please take care if this is a topic that is difficult or triggering for you. <3
> 
> Additional, spoilery chapter-specific content warnings in the middle of the six lines of stars...  
> *  
> *  
> *  
> Content warnings:  
> \- Mention of past side character death  
> \- Mention of past imprisonment  
> \- Mention of past abuse of unnamed past background characters  
> \- Drowning  
> *  
> *  
> *

 

The sky is overcast and the garden is overgrown.

As Kathryn Janeway makes her way up the gravel path, she once again takes in the sight of the dry fountain and the scruffy topiaries. Everything looks as it did before, from the weeds poking up through the cracked terraces to the weathered brick of the observatory, which stands, worn and solid, beneath the pale grey sky.

Dully, she remember’s Seven’s words. _This place is circular. I do not know if we will ever truly be able to escape._

There are the cliffs, stretching into the distance on either side of the dilapidated garden. There are the tangled rose bushes. There is the wheelbarrow she noticed the first time she walked up the path.

She thinks of B’Elanna’s teasing words on the train. _I wonder what Janeway’s was. She hasn't said peep about it. Her ready room, maybe? I can't imagine her wanting to be anywhere but in the thick of things, preferably bossing us all around--_

With all the talk of ideal environments, Kathryn can’t help but agree that, at first glance, this quiet grey place would not appear to be anyone’s idea of perfect. Maybe that, though, is the reason why, when she first stood here, she felt such a sense of peace. This simulation can see all of her, after all. It knows who she is, and that she is not someone who would be comfortable with sappy bliss.

_In this way, it appears that the creators intended the program to give patients something combining hospice care and the beginning of an afterlife._

When her life does end, some time a long time from now, she wouldn’t mind ending up somewhere like this--imperfect and peaceful, with a task to accomplish and a chance to see the stars.

But this is not the end of her life. These peaceful surroundings are a trap, and the only way to make it back to Voyager is to find a way to escape them.

How? She mulls over what Tuvok told her. _B’Elanna’s advice to you was, ‘Whatever she hasn’t tried yet, tell her to do that.’”_

What is it that she has not done? What can break the loop of this simulation? Fighting through the environments only brought her back here. Doing nothing will inevitably lead to her memory yet again being erased.

If this was a holonovel, she could kill her simulated self to wake up in the real world, but...no. This world is a friend to death. Another simulated end to her simulated self’s life won’t startle it at all.

She pivots in a slow circle, peering at the landscape that surrounds her.

Well, she has already tried heading forward into the next environment through the EXIT door. There’s only one other way to walk. If travelling between environments doesn’t work, time to see if she can reach the edge of this one.

Turning right and cutting through a dilapidated knot garden, Kathryn begins striding briskly away from the observatory and the boundary wall, following the edge of the chalky cliffs.

The further she gets from the garden, the thicker the scrubby greenery grows. She swears as a root sends her sprawling, glancing back at the observatory as she pushes herself to her feet. Just as the winding clifftops ahead of her are obscured by the haze of distance, the garden and observatory are growing smaller and less distinct the farther she gets. Sweat beads on her brow as she hikes, as efficiently as she can, through the underbrush. How long has she been walking? One kilometer? Two?

Behind her, only the tiny dome of the observatory is visible, until finally it disappears completely into the distance.

She keeps walking.

Her throat is dry, salty sweat covering her face and soaking her shirt. She thinks of the empty tin cup in her pack. The wet crash of saltwater waves along the base of the cliffs is taunting her, and the image of a tall glass of water materializing in a replicator pops into her mind unbidden.

_Soon, Kathryn. Just keep going._

She tries not to think about her exhaustion, or her thirst, or the ache of her muscles. The dark green bushes and underbrush around her, however, offer little to distract her. If she were in reality, with a pack full of food and water and a map and a compass, maybe this trek would be pleasant, walking along the cliffs listening to the sound of the sea. As it is, she has never been so sick of a hike in her life.

Every once in a while, she glances over at the faint line of the boundary wall, which runs along parallel to her path a little over a hundred meters to her right. She has not seen another door in the wall, not that her plan would include entering it even if she did. To her left there is only the ragged edge of the cliffs and the ocean far beneath them. Adding insult to injury, walking right along the bluff means that she can’t even enjoy the picturesque sides of the chalky cliffs. All she has to look at is the vast grey sea stretching out to meet the overcast sky. She smiles a little, thinking of how she initially wondered if the mysterious “Voyager” could be a seafaring ship sailing somewhere beyond that horizon. _Not that kind of ship, Kathryn._

Looking back over at the boundary wall, she swears as a stone hidden in the shadow of a bush sends her sprawling again. Pushing herself back to her feet, she glares around at the dim underbrush.

Night is falling.

The straps of the old knapsack dig into Kathryn’s shoulders as she continues to stride forward. Above her, the sky turns faintly orange and purple behind the dull clouds, then dims until she is walking through thick, choking darkness.

She continues, stumbling on sticks and rocks hidden in the darkness of the underbrush, squinting ahead into the night, until finally she sees it: a glint of light far ahead of her. She peers ahead at it, still walking. Yes. It’s not her imagination. In the distance, far ahead of her, there is a source of light.

Striding ahead, Kathryn quickens her pace. She is not sure what the edge of this environment will look like, or what it will take to escape this place, even when she reaches the lights. But at least there is something visible ahead of her to tell her that she is moving forward.

She is not sure how long she has been walking since she began; it could be two hours or five. By her rough estimate, she has walked another five minutes at least before the faint lights become any clearer, rather than a barely-detectable glint. There are a few small points of light, clustered together.

She is so busy squinting at them, trying to make them out, that she stumbles and nearly falls again. Adrenaline shoots through her from the near miss, then fades, leaving her feeling weak and shaky. _Just a little way further, Kathryn. You can make it. Come on. Soon you’ll see your crew again. Your family. You just need to keep going._

She imagines their faces: Harry, proudly explaining his latest innovation; B’Elanna, waking up from her dream on the Barge of the Dead and reaching out to embrace Kathryn; Seven, working quietly by Kathryn’s side in Astrometrics; Tom, looking at her with surprised gratification each time she told him how proud she was of how far he’d come; the Doctor, fussing over her and the rest of the crew during their medical appointments; Neelix, trotting over to her as soon as she entered the mess hall to refill her coffee and offer the latest gossip; Chakotay, taking her hand in his before she left the bridge to prepare for assimilation; Naomi, looking up at her with admiration and trust; Tuvok, by her side during any number of shipwide catastrophes, his eyes telling her that he understood what she was thinking without words. Soon, she will see them all again. She just needs to keep going.

She stumbles again, and squints at the dark ground. The underbrush snags at her pants with every step; she can feel sticks and thorns leaving scratches on top of old scratches, cuts on top of old cuts. The pain is exacerbated by the faint sting of her burns from the smoldering control room; in spite of this, the physical pain does not come close the pain of her thoughts each time she even comes close to allowing herself to think of any of the terrible images from the theatre, dogging at her mind once again as she walks through the dark. _Don’t think about it, Kathryn. Just keep walking._

She focuses on breathing, in and out, as she gets closer to the lights. Sweat beads on her forehead, and she breathes hard as she strides forward. She is so tired. So very, very tired. But she pushes that from her mind as well, trying to move her legs forward robotically, thinking of nothing. The lights grow larger and larger, and she stumbles again after she closes her eyes for a moment, hoping that when she opens them, she will finally be close enough to discern what lies ahead of her. As it turns out, she is not wrong, but as she finally makes out just what it is that lies another fifty meters in front her in the dark, she stumbles to an abrupt stop, staring in numb disbelief.

The lights ahead are the lights of the observatory.

 

Tears roll down Kathryn’s cheeks as she makes her way once more up the garden path.

_This place is circular._

Night has fully fallen, and she can no longer see the garden around her. She can no longer see the sea; only hear the rhythmic lap of waves against the base of the cliff, the sound still floating toward her through the night. The only light is provided by the lamps at the door of the observatory, and the glint of light she left burning in the top.

_This place is circular. I do not know if we will ever truly be able to escape._

She remembers how excited she was--her erased, almost-lost self, all those days ago--to stargaze at the night sky over the sea. That night, the simulation had let her have those stars, gently illuminating the landscape. This time around, the sky has remained overcast; beyond the pool of light cast by the observatory, the sea and the starless sky come together in a great black void.

She shivers, looking away from the lightless abyss, as she remembers another dark void, an endless night between stars. The time she broke down. The time she failed.

One of the many times she failed.

And now she has failed again.

_Well, I tried. No one can say I didn’t try. But we were right the first time. The simulation keeps who it takes._

_It needed to take someone for the controls to allow the others out._

_It took me. And there is no going back._

Walking up the steps to the observatory door, she hesitates, just for a moment. Then she slips inside, letting the door fall closed behind her.

 

Upstairs, Kathryn curls herself into a ball on the threadbare pallet as the guttering lamp flickers and goes out. The pain of failure and loss pound against her mind, and she pushes them away, rolling onto her other side.

She reminds herself that, after all, she hasn’t really failed. The crew is safe. She got them all out.

_There’s no reason to keep fighting._

_It’s over._

_You can just let yourself forget._

She closes her eyes.

For several minutes, she lets herself rest, trying to think of nothing. The pain is terrible: in her legs, in her arms, in her mind, in her heart.

_Not for long. It will go away soon. You’ll forget, and it will all go away._

Gradually, her racing thoughts calm, her limbs growing heavy with sleep.

_Just a few more minutes now. You’ll fall asleep, and by the time you wake up, it will all be gone. All the pain. All the memories. Everything you are._

_Gone. Like it was before._

In the haze between waking and sleeping, Kathryn’s thoughts drift back once again to the garden. She can remember how it felt to be blank and empty, thinking nothing, feeling nothing, hearing nothing but the crunch of gravel as she walked up the path.

Tuvok’s words echo in her head. _You agreed to lose everything for us, Kathryn--your life, your identity, your memories, your home, your self. And you did._

This simulation took it all away, the latest and now the last in a long chain of people and circumstances who have stolen some part of her. It took it all away, and she had nothing.

Right now, as she lies in the darkness, knowing that she has failed, knowing that she has at long last lost everything, having nothing seems a lot more appealing than this.

_Don’t think about the pain. Don’t think about your failures. Just let it go. Let it all go._

_Just fall asleep, and it will all be over._

Keeping her eyes closed and her breathing steady, Kathryn can feel herself slipping closer to sleep, her thoughts growing soft and hazy. Her breathing evens, and her body grows heavy against the pallet, soft and floating beneath her. Her body feels warm and distant as she drifts off to sleep.

_Who are you, after you’ve lost everything?_

Out of the the hazy dimness of approaching sleep, the words bubble up to the surface of Kathryn’s mind, so clear and distinct that they might as well have been spoken aloud.

Abruptly awake, she frowns, lying still with her eyes closed as she tries to place the words.

She can remember hearing them. She can remember the voice. Young. Flat. Trembling with grief.

_Who are you, after you’ve lost everything?_

_What do you have, after you’ve lost everything? What do you do?_

The words are her own.

She recorded the question in a personal log after her father died. She remembers listening to it, afterwards, staring out into the blackness of space.

Clinical depression, a check mark on a PADD in the counselor’s office, walking numbly back to her quarters on the ship she’d tried to return to after he had died. Five unread messages blinking on her computer. Avoiding her family. Her friendships shattered. Her career crumbling. Everything broken. The counselor’s voice. _Recommend immediate leave._ Her connection to Starfleet dissolving. Her father gone. Knees to chin, feeling like she was someone else, feeling like she was outside of herself. The log, words in a voice that did not even sound like her own, floating out into the empty room.

_Who are you, after you’ve lost everything?_

In the dark room at the top of the simulated observatory, Kathryn Janeway’s eye blink open.

_What do you have, after you’ve lost everything? What do you do?_

What did she have, when she came to awareness in the garden? The compassion and fear that flared inside her, even muted, when she saw the letters on her arms. The knowledge that she could not leave someone who depended on her behind.

Or, no--she had no knowledge of that part of her identity, no pre-existing decision not to abandon someone who needed her. She _chose._

_What do you have, after you’ve lost everything?_

She had what she chose to do. She had what she chose to become. She had her love for the people she fought and clawed her way through the terrors of the simulation to remember.

The most painful parts of her career, not personally painful, but rather the most difficult things she has had to bear witness to on the job, have often been situations where sentient beings were trapped and controlled, held prisoner--on a ship or in a cell or a village or a palace--by others who took away their agency. She remembers being impressed, even as it hurt her heart, to see how individuals had the strength to rebel in the tiniest of ways--a glance not meant to be given, a cry for help, a dirty look at a captor or a thousand other fractional assertions of their own right to themselves.

She had never thought she would lose so much agency herself. Even at the worst times, from the Starfleet missions gone wrong to the illnesses and arguments back home, there was always something else to cling to: the fact that she was Starfleet and would be rescued from imprisonment; the knowledge that she could get up and walk away from any kind of conversation back home. And even at the worst times, the times when the pain and the darkness and the memories took her and she didn’t have the strength to rise from her bed: her own fury and shame at herself, the conviction that her illness was her own fault insulating her from acknowledging the extent of her own helplessness.

She has never thought she would end up somewhere like this.

Or perhaps more accurately--for the sake of her own survival, she has never admitted when she has been.

She thinks, now, of those alien prisoners. Frightened children stifled by the judgemental mores their cultures. The Borg drones of Unimatrix Zero, living a life in stolen moments. The telepathic refugees in Devore space. She has always loathed those who disparaged such people for their supposed lack of agency, as though they had chosen their lot. But not until now has she been filled with quite so much admiration for the fragments of agency and defiance and choice that they have stolen back, at moments in between, when they could.

She has never thought to admire such a thing in herself.

This person, this self that she used to be…

Staring into the darkness of the observatory dome, rifling through the thoughts and feelings and memories of the person she has so painfully rediscovered over the course of the last day and a half, it hits Kathryn fully, for the first time, that that woman was not a static personality, a simple collection of memories and preferences. She was an active collection of choices, and of beliefs that were choices as well.

To love, to serve, to defy, to analyze, to wonder, to hope--these were not static traits to be rediscovered.

They were--are--her choices.

_What do you have, after you’ve lost everything?_

_My choices._

_Mine._

_Always._

And...

She thinks of the sunlit forest, Naomi’s favorite toy sitting on the bed, waiting. Tuvok, kneeling beside her in the hot sands of Vulcan and in the ashes of the control room.

She has her choices. She has her beliefs. She has her lasting decision to love the people with whom she shares her life. And she has something she did not even consider, earlier, as she fought her way through the environments.

She has what she has been given.

Naomi’s blue stuffed toy, left behind for her.

Tuvok’s voice, his flickering form laying a hand next to hers in the simulated inferno. _Kathryn, we will always need you. And we will always want you._

Closing her eyes, she imagines once again the faces of her crew, holding their images in her mind. Their faces, their voices, their laughter.

_They love me._

If it were not for her love for them, she would never have made it out of the garden in the first place.

And then they reached back, for her.

Naomi and Tuvok and everyone beside them reached back with their answering love, her love for them and their love for her interlocking to pulling her back to them.

_They love me._

_They don’t just need me--they_ want _me._

Tears spring to her eyes.

_I want to be with them again._

 

She cannot, in this moment, be everything she once was, or everything she wants to be. Nor can she, in this moment, believe with all her heart in the truth of the gifts she has been given. First the years of pain and confusion and mistakes in reality, the depression and guilt that she could not address and would not name. Now the program around her, bleeding her inexorably of memory and identity.

No. She is tired, and she is numb, and she cannot, in this moment, be everything she was or feel the presence everything she has been given. But she can get a few fingernails under it; she can slowly jimmy up the lid to the next minute of her future, and the next minute, and the next. She can keep going, even imperfectly, as she has chosen over and over again.

_I’ve gotten this far._

_I can keep going._

Getting up from the pallet seems to take more energy than a marathon. Her arms tremble as she pushes herself up, and she can feel more tears sparking at her eyes, tears of pain and grief and utter, helpless exhaustion. _Don’t think about--_

 _No._ Do _think about the pain._

She looks back only once at the simulated telescope and simulated dome as she makes her way down the stairs.

_You hurt because you have been hurt. It isn’t shameful. It’s part of your past, of your mind, of you. What have you told your friends when they hurt? What did you tell B’Elanna, and Tuvok, and Seven, talking with them at the worst times of their lives? Someday you’ll be able to feel something better than what you feel now._

The door feels heavier to push open than it did to pull shut, but she leans into it and slips out, closing it behind her.

_But the pain won’t fade because you forget. It won’t go away because you numb yourself. It will loosen its hold because you will make it through._

Stepping once more onto the gravel path, she follows it around to the back of the observatory, staring out over the vast black emptiness of the hidden sea.

Radiation so thick it blots out the stars. Blackness so absolute she has nothing to look at but into herself.

Being alone with herself is not an easy place to be.

But she isn’t alone with herself anymore.

Their love is with her, as it always has been, and now she lets it flow through her mind, cradling her and warming her. She has her choices, and she has her gifts, and the gift her crew has given her is their love, holding her in its embrace as she turns away from the false peace of the garden, away from the rousing challenge of the DO NOT ENTER door, away from the suffocating circles of a place that has been programmed to hold her in its grip and never let her go.

_I love them._

_They love me._

The zig-zagging path that hugs the side of the cliff face is rough and and littered with fallen stones, and Kathryn stumbles more than once as she makes her way down to the edge of the water.

The darkest is almost absolute; when she looks out, she can see only the faintest gray light from the overcast night sky shimmering dully over the waves. The farther she gets from the lights of the observatory, the more it sinks in how very, very alone she is, in the most literal sense of the word: a single, isolated mind alone in the vast darkness of a simulation whose ultimate directive is to destroy all she is and all she has ever been.

To counter both that haunting awareness and the ache of her simulated muscles, she rifles through her memories, letting them warm her. She thinks of the day Tuvok mentioned, the day Seven was kidnapped and Naomi came to her ready room with a rescue plan, and Kathryn told her youngest crewmember how to be a captain.

_There are three things to remember about being the captain of a starship._

She stands on the beach, panting and staring out at the roiling water.

_Keep your shirt tucked in._

As if in a dream, Kathryn adjusts her clothing, tucking in the hem of her tank top and slipping out of her simulated Starfleet-issue boots. Standing in the sand in her sock feet, she glances back once more at the lights of the observatory, then steps forward into the dark water.

The sea is gentle against her skin at first, warm from the day’s sun as she wades in past her knees, then her hips. As she continues to walk, the waters swirls against her waist and ribcage, now warm only at the top and cold against her feet and knees.

When the water reaches her chest, she reaches forward, letting her feet lift from the ocean floor as she begins swimming with long, rhythmic strokes. The blackness surrounds her on all sides now; there is no way to tell what is around her, or see where dark water meets dark sky.

It takes only a minute for her to swim far enough that her feet can no longer touch the bottom. She swims forward, the surface of the water still temperate and the waves still calm. It is another few minutes before she begins to feels the tug of a current.

All at once, it is harder to continue her smooth forward motion on the surface of the water. The current pulls at her, tugging her downward, as she slices determinedly forward through higher waves that peak and crash around her. She is able to continue for another minute, but then a larger wave crashes into her face as she takes a breath, and she inhales saltwater, coughing as her eyes sting. Another wave crashes over her head, and she is underwater, pushing desperately against the invisible ocean around her as the current fights to hold her below the surface. A few seconds later she surfaces, coughing.

_Go down with the ship._

She takes a deep breath before the waves pull back under. The idea of losing herself again terrifies her now, the farther she gets from the shore. Yet if she truly had to do it again, to save her crew, she knows that she would. That even this, her willingness to give everything, has in its own way given her back to herself. If she had not been more worried about the safety of the unknown people recorded on her arms than her own happiness, she never would have walked back through that first door.

Paddling determinedly, Kathryn surfaces, gasping for air as she slices forward, refusing to let the current tug her under again. Her mouth and nose are full of the scent of saltwater, and she can barely see, the salt still stinging her eyes. Not that there is much to look at. She pushes away the feeling of isolation again. She is alone in this simulation. But somewhere, beyond this sea and this sky and this darkness, her crew is waiting for her. She is not, nor has she ever been, truly alone.

_And never abandon a member of your crew._

Somewhere out there, they are waiting. She pushed through hell and high water for them, then did it again when this place stole her memories of her first successful mission. And all along, they were out there. Not giving up on her. Not abandoning her. Refusing to leave her behind.

As the waves crash over her, as the current tugs at her and the dark water threatens to swallow her whole, she pictures their faces once again. Chakotay’s smile from across the center console. B’Elanna furrowed brow, thinking over the ship’s latest challenge. Tuvok’s raised eyebrow each time she did something he considered particularly illogical, and Tom’s laugh the time she caught him conducting a secret poll to determine the cheesiest of what he termed her “corny one-liners.”

 _Well, here’s one for you, Tom:_ _This is one exit I’m not going to take._

Seven was right. It is a whole different battle when you are fighting nothing instead of fighting something. But that does not mean she cannot fight.

Out there, somewhere among the vibrating molecules of the real universe, there is something.

She is something.

She is someone.

And someone is out there. Many someones, someones who love her, love her for who she is and for who she chooses to be.

If there is nothing to fight, then she will fight against that nothing.

For the sake of all the _somethings_ that are worth fighting for. In the universe, and in herself.

The water tugs at her, another wave crashing into her face, and Kathryn closes her eyes as she strains forward, picturing that moment in her ready room, telling Naomi what it meant to be the captain of a starship, surrounded by warmth and light as the flash of stars outside the viewport were reflected in Naomi’s eyes.

What would she want Naomi to do, if she were trapped here?

_Come home._

Kathryn pushes on through the waves, eyes burning, gasping for air and choking on saltwater, until the current pulls her beneath once again, tugging her into an underwater hurricane of bubbles and billowing sand. She cannot tell which way is up and which way is down, but she flails furiously, surfacing again before being pulled under seconds later. She beats at the water, pushing it away and gasping for air each time she surfaces before being pulled back down into the chaos and the dark.


	14. The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Bringing forward the important content warning from Chapter 10:  
> This chapter, and the rest of the fic, deals heavily with Janeway's depression and trauma as well as her self-destructive and suicidal tendencies. Please take care if this is a topic that is difficult or triggering for you. <3
> 
> Additional, spoilery chapter-specific content warnings in the middle of the six lines of stars...  
> *  
> *  
> *  
> Content warnings:  
> \- Drowning  
> \- Vomiting  
> \- Medical  
> \- Food  
> \- Brief mention of past torture  
> \- Discussion of background original character deaths  
> *  
> *  
> *

The weight of water presses down on her, and so does something else, heavy against her limbs. Coughing and gagging at a sudden influx of waterless air, Kathryn puts all her furor and energy into her right arm, wrenching it free of restraint and pushing out against the roiling sea.

“Oof!”

Her fist collides with something warm and solid, which quickly moves out of her reach. Continuing to push against whatever she can reach, she realizes abruptly that her arm is whistling through dry air, and repeatedly thudding into a hard, dry surface. A moment later, strong hands are grabbing hold of it, immobilizing the limb against the unyielding plane. Her stomach is clenched and throbbing from her convulsive coughing, and she gags again, feeling bile rise in her throat.

“Get her onto her side. Keep her airway clear,” an authoritative voice demands.

Hands are pushing and pulling on her, multiple people kneeling over her, rolling her off her back onto her left side, where she wastes no further time in vomiting painfully onto the floor, stomach cramping and body shuddering. A hand is patting her back; another is gently stroking her hair. Someone is cooing soft reassurance, telling her over and over that it’s okay, she’s okay, it’s okay.

Taking a long, shaky breath, Kathryn finally begins to process her surroundings. Dim light, an echoing room. A bright light shining from just behind her. Faces, voices.

She purses her lips, wincing, and someone wipes her mouth with a soft cloth, gently tilting her head away from the mess. The warm hand is still stroking her hair, pushing damp strands behind her ear as she swallows, feeling her breathing calm. A different voice is praising her for that now, telling her to breathe slowly, in and out. _I know,_ she wants to say, _I’ve been trying to. Blame all that damn water._ But she focuses on breathing, letting the even voice guide her. Even voice. Tuvok’s voice.

“Tuvok,” she croaks.

“Captain,” he responds. “You do not need to speak. You are all right. It is all right. Everything is under control.”

“You’re gonna be okay, Kathryn.” Chakotay. He’s leaning over her from above her head, his upside-down face tightened with concern. He moves his large, warm hand from her hair to cup her cheek. “We’re all okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”

“Mmm.” She feels she should give some sort of acknowledgement. Her throat is raw and her head aches. But people are no longer pressing down on her arms and legs, and she shifts slightly, feeling more connected to her body. Her real body.

Isn’t it?

“Over?” she whispers. Chakotay’s face turns puzzled, and she tries again. “Back?”

“Yes, Captain.” A new voice, cool and clear. “You are back in reality. Your--ordeal--” the voice, formerly as even as Tuvok’s, catches just slightly on the word-- “is over.”

“Seven.”

“Yes.”

A sandy-haired man steps around from behind her back to kneel just inside in her line of vision, scanning her body with a device-- _a tricorder_ \--while rubbing his stomach with his other hand. _Tom. Tom Paris._

“Everything’s going to be just fine, Captain,” he tells her. “You did the hard part. Now the Doc and I are going to get you fully disconnected from the program, and you’ll be back on Voyager before you know it.”

“Thank you,” she murmurs, to Tom, to all of them. _Back on Voyager._ Where is she right now? Kathryn stares up into the dark, echoing space, larger than the largest warehouses she has ever seen. The walls appear to be modular, with small lights at the corner of large rectangles, and her eyes burn with tears as she realizes what they are. _They remain in the connection chambers in which they died._

Chakotay must detect her distress, because his face appears in her line of vision again, looking concerned. The bright light shining just behind her--a standing light from Voyager, she realizes, set up for the Doctor’s benefit--throws his face into stark contrasts of light and shadow. “You’re gonna be okay, Kathryn,” he repeats. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

She’d never known a body could be exhausted enough to make even speaking almost impossible. But there are still questions she needs answers to.

“The crew.”

“Are all well. Neelix is presiding over a voluntary group counselling session in the Mess Hall as we speak. Well, he’s calling it a “Moral-Mending Meeting,” but that’s the general idea.”

“‘Omi.”

“Naomi is just fine, Kathryn.” Chakotay’s voice is suddenly even more gentle, and Kathryn narrows her eyes suspiciously. They feel moist. Well, that would explain the solicitude. “She’s with her mother. At this time of night, she’s probably sound asleep with Flotter.”

“Flotter.” A smile spreads across her face. “‘s name is Flotter.”

“Yes.” Chakotay sounds vaguely puzzled, but takes her interest in the topic in stride. “The Flotter doll Harry replicated. It’s held up pretty well over the years.”

“Yes, it has,” she responds, fervently, then starts coughing again.

“Captain, I would encourage you to limit unnecessary conversation.” Kathryn obeys the Doctor’s thinly veiled command, rolling her eyes as soon as his back is turned.

“We’re going to finish disconnecting you now,” Tom says gently, returning to her field of vision with a stack of medkits. Turning her head back and forth, Kathryn can feel the wires at the back of her neck, burrowing into her, and she wants to scream, to run away and never even think about wires or filaments or simulations again. But, of course, she can’t.

Tuvok must catch the sliver of desperate panic in her eyes, because he is immediately leaning over her, getting his face in front of hers so that he is the only thing she sees. “Look at me, Kathryn. You are going to be all right.” His voice is firm and steady in her ears. “You are going to be all right. The procedure will be over soon. You are going to be all right. You will not be alone.”

Staring back at him, trying to think only of his words, she feels her breathing gradually calm. _You did this after the Borg, Kathryn. You can do it again._

“We’re right here with you, Kathryn,” Chakotay says, and now that panic is not blotting out her senses, she can feel his hand holding hers, gentle and warm.

She squeezes his hand lightly, and he squeezes back.

“Your disconnection from the simulation is already complete,” Seven assures her quietly. “Lieutenant Paris and the Doctor merely need to finish removing inert physical connections. You are safe.”

 _Stay,_ she wants to say. _Don’t leave me, not until after I’m free of this thing forever._ But the thought doesn’t make it to her mouth in its unsullied form, instead arriving as a whispered, “You can leave if you want.”

“Ma’am, I don’t think _any_ of us could be pried from your side with a crowbar.”

“We don’t call them crowbars in this century, Tom.” The woman’s dry voice is familiar from what Janeway is starting to think of as both her old memory and her new, but it sounds far calmer than it did when crackling from a stuttering recorder. “Seven, lend me a hand?”

“‘Lanna,” she whispers.

“Is right over there,” Chakotay tells her, smiling.

“We’re not going anywhere, Captain.” Harry’s voice is near her feet; she’s glad she didn’t manage to get a leg free and kick him while she was still thrashing around. “B’Elanna and Seven are on tech, Doc and Tom are doing their thing, Tuvok is standing by to give you a good old-fashioned mind-meld headache if it’s needed, and Chakotay is--”

“Around, getting in the way and doing nothing useful, as usual,” Tom finishes.

“I still control the duty roster, you know, _Lieutenant_ Paris. Haven’t had your fill of sickbay duty this week?”

Tom ignores his superior’s words. “You know, speaking of getting in the way...how helpful would you say Commander Chakotay really is on the bridge, Captain? On a scale of one to ten? Don’t talk. But start thinking about it, because I’m going to bring it up--” he snaps on his second surgical glove, “at the next staff meeting.”

“Are you,” comes the grumble near Kathryn’s head.

“After all, that first officer chair takes up a lot of space. If we got rid of it, we could put in a coffee machine.”

Kathryn smiles sleepily.

“Maybe even a pool table.”

“Brilliant idea, dear. Please switch on the monitor transceiver,” calls B’Elanna’s voice.

“Right away, Chief.”

Kathryn watches through drooping eyelids as Tom and the Doctor place three open medkits beside her, showcasing an alarming array of tools. As the Doctor leans forward and she hears the familiar hiss at the side of her neck, she spots Tom out of the corner of her eye, giving himself the same treatment with a thin painkiller hypo.

Catching her gaze as he pulls on his surgical mask, he grins.

“You throw a mean sucker punch, ma’am.”

“Thank you, Tom,” she mumbles, before slipping gratefully into a hyposprayed sleep.

 

The lights of sickbay are, as ever, just slightly too bright. As Kathryn slowly blinks herself awake, she feels the weight of a warm, heavy blanket over her, and the firmness of a biobed under her back. Experimentally, she moves her head, then her arm, then wriggles her body on the biobed. No wires. No microfilaments.

Relief floods her, warm and overwhelming. _Just me. No program. No simulation. Just me._

“Captain, how are you feeling?” asks a gentle voice to her left.

Kathryn turns her head to see Ensign Wildman perched on a chair beside the biobed.

“Samantha,” she croaks.

Samantha smiles. “Right here.”

Janeway blinks sleepily at her. “The procedure worked?”

“You are completely free of technology,” Samantha confirms with a reassuring smile. “I’m sure the Doctor will have some diagnostic questions for you soon, but for now, I don’t see the need to pull him out of his office.” She winks. “Per his words, you’re going to experience considerable muscle weakness and some minor motor control issues for the next few days as a result of your time hooked into one of those connection chambers, but you’ll be essentially back to normal by the end of the week.”

Kathryn glances around the empty sickbay. “Just me?”

Samantha nods, divining her meaning. “We were all disconnected from the simulation two days before you, before the microfilaments could wreak too much havoc.”

“Good,” Kathryn says, but her dry throat makes her voice comes out croaky again.

“Would you like to try to drink something?”

Kathryn nods, trying to prop herself up on her elbow. Shaking her head, Samantha brings over a pile of pillows, helping Kathryn to sit up, or at least to slump against the pillows in a slightly more upright position.

It takes considerable energy for her to pull her hands out from under the covers as Samantha crosses over to the sickbay replicator, but she does it.

“How’s the crew?” she manages.

“Considering what we experienced, the mood on board is relatively upbeat.” Samantha returns from the replicator, perching back on her chair with cup in hand. “Neelix has been holding Moral-Mending Meetings a few times a day, and I think knowing that everyone made it through this crisis in one piece is a good feeling for all of us.” Matter-of-factly, Samantha reaches for Kathryn’s right hand, helping her wrap it around the lidded cup, which is unexpectedly cold to the touch. But she keeps own hand wrapped around the cup over top of Kathryn’s, bearing the actual weight of the beverage as Kathryn concentrates on bringing the straw to her lips.

As Kathryn drinks, her eyes widen in surprise, then close in bliss. Samantha is smiling at her in quiet satisfaction when she opens them.

“Until the Doctor clears you to drink anything with a significant level of trimethylpurine, Mr. Paris and I thought you might like enjoy a protein and sucrose-rich emulsion flavored with chlorogenic acids.”

“I can’t believe,” Kathryn murmurs, shaking her head slightly, “that Voyager’s best xenobiologist and least mature helmsman conspired to sneak me a coffee ice cream milkshake.”

“I won’t give you black coffee even if you flatter me, Captain.”

“Oh, I’m serious, Ensign.” Her voice is less scratchy now, and though speaking takes effort, her mouth and lips seem to be remembering better how to perform their task the more she talks. “I’ll remember this next time promotions come around.”

“See that you do.” Samantha smiles, helping her commanding officer raise the straw to her lips again.

As odd as it feels to be mothered by a member of her crew a good half-decade her junior, Kathryn has to admit that it’s also a bit of a relief not to have any of the colleagues with whom she works closely feeding her a milkshake while she muzzily gets her bearings. Although she _is_ awake enough to intuit that if Samantha is here, it’s because Chakotay, Tuvok and, oh joy, maybe even Tom and Seven have already exhausted themselves watching her drool in her sleep for hours on end.

Oh, well. It isn’t as though everyone on the senior staff haven’t all seen each other plenty of times in the same mildly ignominious position.

“How is Naomi doing?” she asks Samantha sleepily when the milkshake is half gone.

Seeming to intuit that Kathryn would benefit most from being entrusted with an honest answer, Samantha regards her seriously. “She’s good. She’s been reacting a lot like she has after other difficult experiences the crew has gone through together--lots of question about what happened, and sticking a little closer to me. I gave the _Manual for Caregivers of Children on Space Stations and Starships_ chapter on mental manipulation a re-read, and Tom Paris and Evelyn Rameau and I have all been talking with her about what happened.”

Kathryn’s heart clenches with the familiar guilt and grief of not being able to protect her youngest crewmember from the universe. _Not your fault,_ she reminds herself. _Tuvok said it himself--without prior knowledge, there was nothing more we could have done to escape the simulation._

_All you need to do is be there for her--for all of them--as best you can._

“She was very worried about you,” Samantha continues, “but I told her that you were doing your job as a captain and taking care of the crew. She will be happy to hear that I talked to you today. She’s a resilient kid,” she finishes. “She’ll be okay.”

“Thank you.” Kathryn’s eyelids are drooping in spite of herself, but it’s important to tell Samantha how much she appreciates the update. “Thank you for letting me know. Tell her…” She trails off for a minute, thinking of all the things she wants and needs to tell Naomi. “Tell her thank you for being so caring, and that I’m looking forward to seeing her soon.”

“I will.” Samantha reaches down to pull something out of a bag at her feet. “Actually,” she adds, with a smile that is part amused, part sheepish, “she wanted you to have this. She always cuddles him herself, when she’s sick or sad…” The younger woman trails off, looking slightly surprised to see her captain reaching out for the blue stuffed creature like a child for her teddy.

“That was very sweet of her.” Kathryn sets Flotter on her stomach, where he regards her with familiar replicated eyes. She chuckles then, grinning at Samantha, who looks slightly relieved to be back in familiar coo-over-the-child’s-childlike-effort-to-help-an-adult territory. “I’ll have him back with her when I’m out of sickbay.”

Samantha grins. “I’ll let her know.”

 

The next time Kathryn stirs from sleep, the Doctor is at her side with a battery of questions--although without taking any ostentatious tricorder readings, confirming her suspicion that, physiologically speaking, she has been exceptionally closely monitored. Typically, she finds the feeling of being watched over by a phalanx of sickbay equipment unsettling, but this time, she finds that she can’t bring herself to mind. Voyager’s sickbay might be filled with bright lights, menacing medical equipment, and, not least, the Doctor, but she has to admit that, after the worst scrapes in the Delta Quadrant, there is nowhere she has come to feel more intuitively safe.

She and the Doctor are equally pleased to discover that she is able to sit up a little more independently, and hold her own beverage. Her satisfaction is dulled only slightly by his refusal to give her anything caffeinated, instead replicating a cup of of Herbal Tea #01, which, she has always thought, tastes less like a specific flavor of tea and more as though every existing variety of herbal tea was averaged.

His bedside manner is somewhat gentler than usual, however, which makes her suspicious.

“None of this weakness is permanent, right?” she asks, as she reaches the fourth minute of his ministrations with nary a recrimination.

“Thanks to the wonders of modern medicine, your body will be back to its prior capabilities in less than a week,” he responds cheerfully. “One doesn’t bounce back from being, colloquially speaking, dead for several hours with no ill effects, but presuming that even you, Captain, have the patience to spend a few days recuperating, you should experience minimal lasting effects. Now that we’re in contact with the Alpha Quadrant, I might write a short paper about the techniques Lieutenant Torres and I used to disconnect the microfilaments from your nervous system, with you as the patient kept anonymous, naturally--”

“Doctor, if I may get a word in--”

“Of course I’ll give Lieutenant Torres equal credit for her contributions to the paper,” he assures her hastily.

Janeway rolls her eyes. “ _Not_ what I was worried about. Although now I’m wondering if maybe she should be. Listen. Doctor. Is there something you haven’t been telling me since I woke up?”

The EMH looks slightly puzzled. “No, Captain.”

“You’re being very...pleasant.” As the Doctor begins to puff himself up, she cuts him off. “Sorry, Doctor, I know that was a snide way to put it. But...you’ve been treating me with the same consideration as you did Tuvok after he was nearly genuinely assimilated by the Borg, as though I’ve been through some terrible ordeal and now you’re worried about me.”

“Oh. Well. Didn’t you?” Pursing his lips and raising his eyebrows, the Doctor turns and begins replacing instruments on the rolling cart. “By any reasonable measure, you’ve been through quite an ordeal, physically and psychologically. I wouldn’t be much of a medical professional if I didn’t acknowledge that.”

“But everyone went through the simulation, including you. I don’t…” She stares into the empty teacup. “I don’t want want to take up undue time or attention.”

“You are the only one who did it twice.” Placing an empty hypospray onto the cart with a smart click, he adds, quietly, “And more to the point, you were the only member of the crew who remained in the simulation long enough to have your memories completely erased. Recovering and re-processing a lifetime of painful memories in a few hours is well outside the bounds of ordinary human experience. And that is on top of the trauma of having your identity wiped in the first place.” Reaching forward, he plucks the cup from her fingers. “You’re due some time in sickbay to recuperate. Let me know if you’d like me to adjust the lights,” he adds gruffly over his shoulder as he pushes the cart back toward his office.

 _Ah._ Janeway grins. Six and a half years, and he’s finally figured out that the best way to keep someone in sickbay is to make it, through manner and lighting, not an entirely unpleasant place to be.

She shakes her head fondly at his retreating form. Barely older than Naomi in a sense, having spent his existence on a ship that has been through six and a half years of constant crises and chaos and confusion and happiness and tragedy. And, out of it all, here he is.

Maybe that, she realizes, is another part of the reason for his graceful compassion with her now. After all, far more than anyone else on Voyager, he knows what it is to come into awareness unmade, and create oneself out of that.

Sometime soon, when she can hold an object without her hands shaking, she might take advantage of his solicitude to request a few crew reports, or at least a novel. But for now, Kathryn finds she wants to do nothing more than curl on her side under the heavy blanket, feeling the reassuringly solidity of the biobed pressing against her hip and shoulder as she stares at the comforting blankness of the sickbay wall. Pain will come later, and relief, and analysis of all that’s happened. But for now, the crew is safe, and Voyager is safe, and she is safe and intact and back home on Voyager, and the only thing she has the energy to do is be.

 

“Captain?”

The cool voice pulls her out of her dream, a dream about being surrounded once again by dark water, and Kathryn blinks awake, gasping.

“Are you all right?”

“I am.” She is warm and dry and there are the sickbay lights and there is Seven’s face, leaning over her with concern. “Just...my brain decided I was back in the simulation again.” She leans back on the pillows, smiles weakly. “But I’m not.”

Without responding, Seven walks to the sickbay replicator, and returns with a cup of Herbal Tea #01. “The Doctor has approved you to drink non-caffeinated beverages, and I have found it...helpful to consume a small amount of nutrients after an unpleasant dream.”

“Thank you, Seven.” She takes a sip of the tea, the annoyance of its averaged flavor as comforting as the slightly-too-bright sickbay lights.

“I hope that your recovery continues to proceed smoothly.” Seven adjusts a folded-over corner of Kathryn’s blanket. “Lieutenant Tuvok informed me that he has been watering your plants, and that he put fresh sheets on your bed this morning.”

Kathryn smiles. “We’ve gotten into the habit of doing that for each other, when one of us is here for more than a few days.”

“It is an efficient gesture of care.”

“As is bringing me a nice hot cup of tea. Thank you, Seven.”

“You are welcome.” Seven raises her eyebrows slightly in acknowledgement.

“So.” Janeway rests the cup against her knee, looking at Seven. “How are you doing?”

“I am well. Although this crisis provided a challenge to this crew, we were able to adapt. In the time since we were separated from the simulation,” she continues, “I have been assisting with the shutdown of the satellite, and with repairs of the light damage Voyager sustained to several key systems.”

“I’m sorry you had to leave the Unimatrix again,” Kathryn says gently, “even a simulated one.”

“I appreciate your concern,” says Seven. She tilts her head, staring at a point on the wall behind Janeway’s shoulder. “Rejoining the Voyager collective in the real universe, however,” she says calmly, “was more than worth this loss.”

“I’m quite glad you feel that way,” Kathryn says, smiling softly.

“It is the nature of the Borg to seek perfection, but a simulation’s idea of ‘perfection,’” Seven continues, managing to insert just a bit of contempt into the words, “is not comparable to the lives we individuals have chosen for ourselves.”

Janeway chuckles. “No. Not much is, I think.”

“I was impressed,” Seven continues, “with the efficiency of the crew’s response to this crisis. I have observed that many of the crewmembers who first found their way to Lieutenant Torres’s and my environments were those well-practiced in their resistance to circumstances that interfered with the course of their lives without their consent. While they hardly deserved to endure additional pain, their resolve appears to have helped all of us.”

Until now, Kathryn had forgotten about B’Elanna’s similar observation. She smiles. “Thank you, Seven, for _your_ contribution to that resistance.”

“I was merely one component of our collective effort,” Seven says, with uncharacteristic modesty.

“Yes, well, we were certainly lucky to have your programming skills. And your analytical abilities. You were right,” she adds quietly, “about the simulation not being the kind of enemy I characterized it as.”

“You have always found it easier to fight for a collective,” Seven says bluntly, “than to fight for yourself.” Kathryn’s eyebrows raise, and Seven continues, “You have always found it easier to fight than to do things that are not that kind of fighting at all.”

Kathryn opens her mouth to tell Seven to mind her own business, then sighs. “Yes. I’m starting to realize that now. And I…you’ve experienced post-traumatic stress, Seven, so I know how you...know how the past can haunt one after it’s gone, or how it’s possible for parts of one’s mind to do things that aren’t...what a healthy mind would choose.” She smiles sadly. “Looking back over my time in the simulation, as I was starting to recover my mind, it’s easy to see the points when I stopped making deductions based on logic and started making assumptions based on…” She trails off. “Other things.”

“According to medical texts, a known symptom of clinical depression in humans is the tendency to see negative patterns where none exist,” Seven agrees.

Janeway rolls her eyes. “Yes, Seven, thank you for being so clinical about it.”

“We _are_ in sickbay, Captain.”

“Yes, all right, point taken.” She sighs again. “I can’t help but wonder. It’s such a negative assumption to leap to, knowing that I had been trying to help my crew escape the simulation, not seeing any of them in the simulation, and not even considering the possibly that that was because the escape had been successful.” She drains the last of the tea, and Seven takes the cup from her before she can set it down. “I’d just watched a memory of myself telling the crew we were going to make it home, so I suppose I had an overriding sense that I’d failed at everything that mattered, and I always would. A negative pattern, as you said.” The corner of her mouth twitches. “Human brains are complicated, aren’t they?”

For a minute, they sit in silence.

“Captain?”

“Yes?”

Seven hesitates. “The assumption that we were trapped rather than that we had escaped…”

“What is it, Seven?”

Seven hesitates again, then folds her hands and says quietly, “I am glad that your subconscious mind made an assumption that led you to keep going.”

Janeway tilts her head thoughtfully. “Hmm. Me, too.”

 

Kathryn is still awake and reading a novel when B’Elanna stops by sickbay on Seven’s heels, perching on the edge of the chair by Kathryn’s bed and immediately tearing up.

“Are you all right?” Kathryn asks, alarmed.

“Am I--? Oh, no, I’m fine. I just--” She bites her lip, looking down. When she looks back up, any trace of tears has vanished. “It’s good to see you again, Captain,” she says formally.

“It’s very good to see you too, B’Elanna.” Kathryn lays a hand on B’Elanna’s shoulder. “I’ll be out of sickbay soon, and I’m quite certain that you’ll wish you could stick me back in here by the time the next morning meeting rolls around.”

B’Elanna laughs. “Seven said you seemed to be ‘recovering at an adequate pace.’ I’m glad to see that that’s true.”

“Of course. After all, I need to get back ‘in the thick of things, bossing you all around.’”

B’Elanna groans. “I can’t believe you were the one to listen to that recording.”

“And it was very helpful,” Kathryn tells her, seriously. “B’Elanna, I’m...incredibly grateful for all you did while we were trapped in the program. If it weren’t for your technical skills and your leadership, I don’t know if any of us would have gotten out, and certainly not as quickly or efficiently as we did.”

B’Elanna blushes. “Thank you. We all did our part.”

“And well.” She smiles. “Thanks for braving the Doctor to come visit me.”

B’Elanna glances back towards the office. “ _Don’t_ remind me. I’m willing to see him once a day, hell, even twice a day, for anything that’s actually necessary for a healthy pregnancy, but enough is enough. If he ambushes me on the way out, I can’t promise not to decompile him.”

Kathryn pushes away the same sickening feeling of guilt she felt in the simulation, thinking of everything B’Elanna has gone through on Voyager while expecting a child. “And how is our youngest crewmember doing?”

“She’s fine. Everything’s just fine, now.” But B’Elanna’s voice wavers on the last word, and she bows her head quickly, as though trying once again to hide tears. Kathryn frowns, leaning forward.

“B’Elanna, what’s wrong?”

B’Elanna palms her stomach, pressing her lips together tightly and turning away.

“What’s wrong, B’Elanna?” Kathryn asks gently.

“I didn’t mean to bother you...you’re still recovering...I just…” B’Elanna looks down at the swell of her abdomen, then back up at Kathryn. “On the satellite, we all woke up, and--and you didn’t, and I was so scared,” she whispers. “I didn’t know how I was going to do this without you.”

“Oh, B’Elanna.” Kathryn reaches for B’Elanna’s hand, squeezing it tightly. “I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”

“I know. I know.”

“It’s okay.” Kathryn lets go of her hand. “I promise. It’s all going to be okay.”

“I’m so glad to have you back,” B’Elanna whispers, and reaches for her, giving Kathryn a light hug where she lies propped against the pillows. But before she moves away, Kathryn hugs her back, leaning forward and wrapping her arms around B’Elanna. B’Elanna holds her more tightly, rubbing a hand up her back and resting it against Kathryn’s hair. Accepting the implicit invitation, Kathryn leans her head against B’Elanna’s shoulder, nestling into the crook of her neck.

They sit there for several minutes, the warmth of B’Elanna’s skin seeping into Kathryn’s cheek. She can feel B’Elanna crying softly, each small sob reverberating through her torso as she sniffles next to Kathryn’s ear. Tears spark in her own eyes as she breathes the scent of engine grease and lotion on B’Elanna’s uniform jacket.

It feels good to be held.

 

Chakotay is dozing by her bed when she wakes in the small hours of ship’s morning.

“Chakotay.”

He blinks awake, smiling down at her. “How are you feeling, Kathryn?”

“Well enough for a nice cup of coffee,” she says hopefully.

“Points for trying, but the Doctor made a point of telling me that you have a few days to go before you’re cleared.” Chakotay glances down to hide his grin. “Apparently he found out about your little milkshake stunt.”

“It wasn’t _my_ stunt,” she protests. “Technically speaking.”

“Well, technically speaking,” he tells her, “according to the Doctor, you’re banned from the replicators as long as you’re in sickbay. I’m allowed to offer you decaf,” he adds, stifling another grin as she makes a face.

“Worse than nothing. _Worse than Herbal Tea #01._ ”

When Chakotay stops chuckling, he tells her, with genuine sympathy, “I’m sorry you’re going to be stuck in sickbay for so long. I remember how stir-crazy you felt after our little adventure with the Borg.”

“I don’t mind being in sickbay so much right now,” she admits quietly. Chakotay looks surprised, and she is quiet for a moment, trying to figure out how to articulate the difference. “After all, the Borg are...well, they’re a collective of billions, all thinking the same, all speaking with the same voice…” She purses her lips. “After getting all their junk out of my body, after watching Tuvok nearly be assimilated in mind as well as body...all I wanted to do was take a hot bath in my own quarters and be by myself so I could feel like myself again. Being in the simulation, being _that_ alone, was...well, the opposite of that.” She smiles slightly at him. “I supposed the constant parade of visitors is a good reminder that this ordeal really is over.” Her voice breaks, entirely unexpectedly, on the last word, and Chakotay is instantly the picture of concern.

“That makes sense,” he says, after a moment of concerned hovering. “That makes perfect sense, Kathryn.”

She tries to smile at him. “I’m okay. It’s a lot to process, that’s all. I’m okay.”

“And I’m very glad of that.” His smile is warm and genuine, but his voice is slightly tight. Or maybe she’s imagining that, but one way or another…

“All right, I knew that sooner or later we were going to have to have this talk.” She closes her eyes for a moment.

“Talk?”

She takes a deep breath. “I risked my life for the crew.” Gave it up entirely, in fact, or so they had all thought when she first walked into the control room, but no need to point up that fact. “I know it worries you when I put myself in danger. And I know you think I do it too often.”

Chakotay is silent for a long moment. She will wait to hear what he has to say, she tells herself. She owes him that much.

“I admire the way you protect people.” Kathryn looks at him in surprise. “I’ve always admired you for it. From the first day we met. I’ve spent a good deal of time angry at you for taking unnecessary risks, but many of the risks you’ve taken for others have been necessary. It’s what makes you the captain that I’m willing to serve under.”

Kathryn remembers what she thought about as she fought her way through the simulated water, knowing that if she did need to sacrifice herself again for the crew, she always would. “Thank you,” she whispers.

He sighs. “I wanted you to know that. But, Kathryn…”

“I know,” she says. She isn’t exactly sure what she’s telling him she knows, but she’s pretty certain that she does know.

“I thought we’d lost you.”

“I know.”

“And I thought…” He turns his face away for a moment, then back to her, looking haunted. “Do you remember when the matrix alien took your mind hostage after you died in the shuttle accident?”

Kathryn raises her eyebrows. “It isn’t an experience I’d be inclined to forget, no.”

“Well, when we talked, after it was over...you told me how the alien showed you hallucinations of your funeral. That it showed you how much Harry and B’Elanna admired you, and how much Tuvok and Kes and I missed you, and…” He scrubs his face with his hand.

Kathryn stares at him, waiting for him to make his point.

“Things haven’t always been as comfortable on Voyager over the last few years,” he finally mutters. “When we were waiting to see if you would make it back from the simulation, there was nothing I could do, and I just--” His voice breaks. “I just kept watching you, thinking, ‘What if she doesn’t know how badly we want her back? What if it’s different this time?’”

Kathryn thinks of her time in the simulated theatre. “It was...complicated,” she tells him. “But I did know. I do.”

They sit in silence for a moment.

“I’m sorry.” The words scratch hesitantly out of her throat. Apologizing to her executive officer always feels like some kind of betrayal of her own authority, no matter how petty such a feeling is. But she knows she needs to say it. “I’m sorry for worrying you.”

Chakotay looks at her, raising his eyebrows in disbelief. She really hasn’t apologized to him very often over the years, she reflects, and when she does, she seldom uses the exact words.

To her surprise, he chuckles gently, and reaches his right hand to cover hers, squeezing it lightly. “Thank you, Kathryn. It’s always interesting to hear an apology out of your mouth. But…” His face turns serious again. “Out of all the things you could apologize for--Kathryn, this is _not_ one of them. What happened in the simulation wasn’t your fault.” His voice is deadly earnest. “You don’t _ever_ have to apologize for anyone or anything hurting you.”

After a minute, she says in a small voice, “But what if what happened in the simulation...was because of…” She hesitates. “Things that are a part of me?”

There is another long silence. Then Chakotay simply repeats, strong emotion in his voice, “You don’t ever have to apologize for anyone, or any _thing_ , hurting you. I’m just…” His hand tightens over hers. “We’re just glad you made it back to us.”

“Thank you,” she whispers. “I’m glad too.”

They sit together in silence for several more minutes, until the Doctor bustles over to look at Kathryn’s readings. After he retreats to his office, Chakotay pulls out a report PADD, clearing his throat.

“I thought you might want a short update on the status of the satellite shutdown.” He thumbs through the PADD as he summarizes its contents. “The crew has been recording names, registry numbers, everything we can find on the murdered crews. In addition to leaving a message buoy, we can share our information about what happened here with all the civilizations we encounter going forward.”

Kathryn nods. “Some of the people who died in this place will finally be accounted for by their loved ones. Or by their descendents.”

Chaktotay smiles sadly. “Maybe now, they’ll finally have some measure of peace.”

“Ironic, isn’t it?” She sighs. “Peace was exactly what the program was originally designed to bring.”

“It’s a shame,” Chakotay agrees quietly. “To see something that started out helpful and protective, but ended up twisted and destructive and not what it was meant to be.”

They sit for another minute, saying nothing. Finally, she looks at him again, smiling.

“Have I told you lately how grateful I am that, out of all the people I could have sat beside during this journey, I have had the privilege of having it be you?”

“You convey it. But you can flatter aloud me any time you like.” A grin.

“Yes, well. I…” She trails off, trying to figure out how to articulate her next words. _I know that things are messy, and chaotic, and sometimes ugly, this far along in our little lifetime-long mission. And I regret that, and I also think some of it may have been inevitable, and I don’t know where the line between regrettable and inevitable lies. And I know that my guilt drags me down further than it needs to sometimes, but also that I’ve done things that really are worth a good deal of regret, and I’m not sure exactly where that line lies, either._

_And despite all that, we’re still here, together, facing the universe hand in hand. Even after what it did to all of us this week. Even after what it did to me this week. After everything._

“I know that…”

To give voice to any of that would be acknowledging the messiness and chaos, perhaps more than the two of them have these past few years. She breaks off and sighs, trying to settle on what to say aloud to convey some part of her thoughts.

 _Why don’t you just tell him all of that?_ a quiet voice inside her asks.

 _We don’t talk like that!_ Chakotay wasn’t wrong, when he said that things on Voyager have not been as comfortable as they used to be. _And even before, we never_ have _been all that good at talking to each other about...these kinds of things. Not really._

_Still. It’s not some stranger. It’s Chakotay. Tell him._

Taking a deep, only slightly shaky breath, Kathryn clear her throat and begins.

 

On the sixth day since she was detached from the simulation, Kathryn meets Tuvok in the transporter room to beam back onto the satellite and watch the Voyager engineering team finish shutting the simulation down.

Kathryn’s hands clench and unclench as they rematerialize in the dark, warehouse-like space. Aside from the gold-shouldered engineers clustered around the server bank set into the main wall, it looks much like it did when she first woke from the simulation.

She glances up at the rows upon rows of connection chambers, now emptied of the bodies of the simulation’s victims. A spatial exploration organization from a nearby planet has already come to pick up one vessel and the remains of its crew. The rest of the remains have been placed aboard their vessels, to be retrieved by their own people--or, failing retrieval, to remain on the ships where they once chose to spend their lives, rather than in the place where their lives were taken from them.

As she stands in what was recently a mass grave, Kathryn finds that she feels more like she is staring at a drowned city or a ship decimated by an ion storm, rather than a malevolent enemy. In her life, she has been shot, and she has been betrayed, and she has been tortured. And she has rarely felt much pity when someone who hurt her or someone she cared about got what they deserved.

This enemy, though…at the end of the day, it is little more than a directive gone wrong, a once-relevant purpose twisted into a destructive ghost.

“It’s just doing what it’s always done,” she says softly.

Tuvok glances at her, then back at the towering black servers. “Yes.”

“But we don’t have to.”

“No. We do not.”

From the far side of the room where the power cell is stored, someone calls out in readiness, and the end of the satellite begins.

It takes nearly twenty minutes for the shutdown to be complete. Fans and power sources sputter and whirr on their way to becoming inanimate, a few safeguards throw out a last gasp of resistance, and the lights on the connection pods and along the edges of the servers begin, row by row, to go dark.

Finally, the whirr quiets, and the final light blinks off.

There is a brief moment of total silence. Then the engineering team lead is calling orders, and the demolition crew is moving in. Several minutes later, after a few last words with the engineers, Kathryn walks toward the door of the bay, and Tuvok follows.

At the door, she pauses for a moment. Tuvok stops walking and watches her, waiting.

The noise of a centuries-old tragedy at last being demolished is still clearly audible from across the room behind them. Kathryn bows her head for a moment, letting out a deep breath, then reaches for the door. Tuvok lays his hand beside hers, pushing it open, and together, they walk forward.


	15. The Stars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specific content warnings in the middle of the six lines of stars...  
> *  
> *  
> *  
> Content warnings:  
> \- Post-traumatic symptoms  
> \- Food  
> *  
> *  
> *

 It has been one and a half weeks since she was transported from the satellite to sickbay, and two days since she has been back in her own quarters, when Kathryn returns to light administrative duty. She is not, she has decided, ready to resume command quite yet; Chakotay and Tuvok are still the acting captain and executive officer of Voyager. But she is more than ready to familiarize herself with Voyager’s current status, from strategic memos to waste reports. Plus, taking some of the paperwork off the rest of the senior staff’s plates helps keep her guilt at bay about their having to pick up her slack. Each time she begins to stew about her current lack of contribution, she reminds herself that she would not--has not--reproached any of them for taking time to recover from an injury or jarring event. _They won’t reproach you, either._

On the third day of administrative duty, she informs the senior staff of her intention to resume command at the end of next week. But for now, she signs paperwork and drinks tea and rests, gazing out at the stars. Neither Tuvok nor Chakotay have even once pressured her into taking additional time, simply telling her that she can return to duty when she and the Doctor believe she is ready. She darkly suspects them of attempting reverse psychology.

Or perhaps they have simply come to trust her more, now, with such things.

For now, she sits in her quarters and reads, and knits, and even pulls out her old easel to paint scenes from Delta Quadrant shore leaves. At night, whenever she wakes up trembling and unsure of where she is and whether she exists, she takes a steaming cup of coffee to her favorite chair by the viewport and sits curled under a blanket, watching the stars.

 

The day before she is scheduled to resume command, Kathryn walks through the door of the mess hall, a large pink gift bag swinging from her hands.

“Captain! Good morning!”

“Good morning, Neelix,” Kathryn responds, grinning to herself as Neelix bustles over to her.

“As you can see, today’s special is Betazoid oatmeal! A taste of home all the way from the Alpha Quadrant. I’m also whipping up my famous seven-spice Jibalian omelette for anyone who wants one.”

“Just oatmeal for me today. Thank you, Neelix.”

Before handing over the plate of oatmeal, Neelix carefully adds an unrecognizable leaf to the center of the plate.

“A garnish.” Janeway bites the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling. “What an elegant touch.”

“I thought so, yes!” Neelix claps his hands and rubs them together before lifting the lid of the chafing dish to give the oatmeal another vigorous stir. “I’ve been trying to add some elegance and comfort to mealtimes this week. This crew has been through a lot.”

“Well, you’re part of this crew too. Make sure you’re taking some time away from the kitchen, Neelix.”

“Oh, I am, Captain, I am. Why, just this morning, I was walking into the holo-resort for a tennis match with Ensign Ayala when…”

Perhaps fortunately, the hiss of the oatmeal pot boiling over sends Neelix scurrying to the back of the kitchen before he can finish his story. Collecting a cup of coffee, Janeway is about to take her tray to a table when he pops back up at the counter.

“Anyway, as I was saying, good food and good company, that’s the ticket. We’re lucky to be on the kind of ship where there’s a bit of free time for everyone to get together after a, a battle or a nasty anomaly or any bit of unpleasantness.”

Janeway thinks of her realization, standing at this same counter inside the simulation, of what it must be like to be Neelix, still appreciative of the luxuries of a functional, peaceful community after all these years. And, as he has since he first came on board, intent upon doing his part to uphold the happiness of that community.

“Thank you,” she tells him, “for hosting your Moral-Mending Meetings.”

“Aha, yes,” he responds, beaming and clapping his hands together again. “I do think that it’s good for people to have a chance to, to talk with each other about what they’ve been through, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Janeway says, smiling. “I do.”

 

Tom and Harry are sitting at the table near the window, heads together, laughing at something.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” she greets them, walking by on her way to the empty table at the corner. She is half a step past when Tom’s voice reaches her. “Captain, join us?”

She still has twenty minutes before her arranged meeting. Backtracking, Janeway toes a chair out and sits opposite Harry, smiling as she sets down her oatmeal. “How are you doing today?”

“Oh, the usual.” Harry grins. “Tom is insisting that if he adjusts the program just right, he can get the lead of the Doctor’s copy of _La Traviata_ to sing to the tune of _shave and a haircut, two bits._ ”

“It’s true! I can do it! If I can just adjust the parameters to--”

Janeway raises a hand. “As long as I don’t get an irate EMH in my ready room demanding that you be called onto the carpet, I’ll leave the computational experimentation in your capable hands.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Rolling her eyes, Janeway finds herself thinking of the days when Tom’s mischief was far more pointed, and she and Tuvok were still able to hatch a plan that hinged on convincing the crew of how little he cared about them. A plan that led to him saving the ship--and not for the last time.

She fiddles with the pepper shaker with her left hand, taking another sip of coffee with her right. “I haven’t had a chance yet to thank you both for what you did on the satellite,” she says quietly. “Not only what you did when we were all inside the simulation, but all the work you did to help me get free.”

It’s Harry’s turn to fuss with his silverware. “Ah, well, thank you, Captain. Of course.”

“What Harry’s trying to say,” Tom puts in, “is that…” He too, however, stalls out for a moment before reaching out to give her two light, awkward pats on the hand, his fingers barely making contact, before clearing his throat and saying, “I think everyone on this crew would have done just about anything to bring you back to us, ma’am.”

Harry nods.

Tom takes another spoonful of oatmeal, clearing his throat. “After all, can you imagine Chakotay as captain? Mr. No Fun Allowed on deck!”

“Tom,” Kathryn says warningly.

“‘Are you monitoring the viewscreen, Mr. Paris?’” Tom continues in a deep voice.

“That sounds more like Tuvok, Tom.”

“Oh, and you think you can do a better impression, Harry?”

“‘Hmm buh dmm, boxing is an ancient and noble sport that requires knowing your opponent, listening to your opponent, being your opponent--’”

“ _Both of you,_ ” Kathryn says sternly, biting her lip, “put a lid on it before I feel compelled to let word of your imitations get back to the man who controls the duty roster.”

Tom grins. “Anyway, Captain, I’m not sure Harry deserves much thanks for his work in the simulation. He enjoying the Vulcan mochas in his cushy environment, that’s for sure, or at least he was until I finally gatecrashed. Still fixated on the good ol’ academy days in SF, eh, Harry?”

Harry shakes his head, smiling. “San Francisco,” he says firmly, “was important because it led me to Voyager.”

Kathryn thinks of the time, years ago, when Harry became trapped in an alternate timeline and gave up his perfect life in San Francisco to make it back to his stranded ship, just as she stepped away from the peaceful garden where she had been free from the stresses and responsibilities of Voyager.

Maybe the simulation never did know them quite as well it might like to think.

“And being assigned to Voyager led you to agreeing to playtest my latest holonovel, Harry,” Tom says, clapping him on the shoulder.

“I thought you were putting aside your childish pursuits in preparation for becoming a parent,” Harry says, rolling his eyes.

“Funny you should mention that, Harry, because this particular holonovel isn’t for me, it’s for my daughter.”

“Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes. Flotter’s forest and Captain Kirk’s oversaturated adventures are one thing, but the selection for younger kiddos is sorely lacking.”

“Lacking _what_ , I’m afraid to ask,” Kathryn puts in, raising an eyebrow.

“Well, lacking giant food items, for one thing. Ever read the old Earth classic ‘Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs,’ Captain? I’m pretty sure it’s instrumental in every child’s development to splash around in a wading pool of spaghetti sauce. In fact, B’Elanna liked the idea so much that she’ll be helping with the playtest after her shift. But I need as many participants as possible, Harry, so don’t think about making up an excuse about band practice.” Draining his coffee, he adds considerately, “I haven’t quite finished dialing in the pressure gauge on the chocolate waterfall, so you might want to wear old clothes.”

 

At two minute after nine hundred hours, Samantha Wildman walks into the mess hall with Naomi by her side. Kathryn stands to meet them.

“Thank you for letting me borrow my assistant, Ensign.”

Samantha grins at her. “Of course, Captain.”

After Naomi has obtained a plate of oatmeal--which receives not one but two garnish leaves, along with a frozen raspberry--and Kathryn has replicated a cup of coffee with cream, the two head for the empty table by the windows. While Naomi eats, Kathryn makes conversation about Neelix’s culinary adventures, the goings-on in Samantha’s science department, and Naomi’s latest kadis kot tournaments with Seven before finally bringing the conversation around to the simulation.

“You’ve been talking about what happened with your mom and Tom and Evelyn, right?”

Naomi nods.

“One reason I wanted to talk with you today is to see if you had any questions you wanted to ask me.” The _Manual for Caregivers_ recommends giving children the opportunity to ask questions about distressing events, and the offer seems like as good a conversation opener as any.

Naomi, however, shakes her head, watching Kathryn cautiously.

Oh, well. Nothing else for it. Kathryn clears her throat. “Naomi, Tuvok and Tom talked with me about how worried you were about me, when we were in the simulation. I want to make sure you know that you don’t have to worry about taking care of me, or your mom, or Seven, or any other adult. I know it can be scary when someone on Voyager is hurt or in danger,” she continues, “but grown-ups are very good at taking care of each other. We all have lots and lots of training to keep each other safe in all different situations, and you don’t ever have to feel like it’s your job to keep us safe.”

Naomi purses her lips and nods solemnly.

“I think it’s amazing how strong and brave you are. You’re an important part of this crew, and you’ve done a lot of good things to help other people on Voyager, like making friends with Seven when she came on board, and helping Azan and Rebi and Mezoti feel welcome.”

Naomi smiles proudly, shrugging one shoulder and fiddling with the hem of her shirt.

“But I don’t want you to grow up feeling like it’s your job to take care of someone else,” Kathryn tells her softly. “I want you to take all your bravery and use it to stay safe when Voyager is in danger. I promise that we’re all going to be doing everything we can to stay safe ourselves.”

Naomi watches her solemnly. “Promise?” she says at last, in a small voice.

Kathryn holds out her right hand, and Naomi shakes it. After they let go, Kathryn gently cups her hand under Naomi’s cheek.

“Promise.”

Naomi’s shoulders slowly relax, and she smiles, a quiet, six-year-old expression of relief.

Kathryn lifts the pink gift bag out from behind the chair. “Speaking of kindness, I wanted to thank you for loaning Flotter to me while I was in sickbay,” she says, as Naomi reaches into the tissue paper. She grins at Naomi’s squeal of delight and dutiful profession of thanks as Flotter emerges from the tissue, clothed in a new floral dress and pink cableknit sweater. “But I think he’s ready to come home.”

 

Back in her quarters, Kathryn puts on her favorite pajamas and applies lip balm and face cream, pulling a clean uniform out of the closet and hanging it on the bathroom door in preparation for morning. Yawning and running a hand through her hair, she walks once around her quarters, looking at the combs on the dresser and the flowers on the table, the everyday relics of a continuing life.

“Coffee. Black.”

The replicator _almost_ obeys--the coffee is strong and black and in a mug, but lukewarm--and she smiles at the familiar irritation. Taking her coffee to her favorite chair facing the viewport, she curls into the chair, pulling a blanket over her lap.

The violation of having her memory and identity erased is still recent, and the fresh memories of her time in the simulation still roil through her mind, one more trauma to add to the pile of times a part of herself has been taken from her. But the simulation did not keep what it took. She is here: her whole self, the self she has spent a lifetime creating each second.

She is here, and she is not alone.

Standing comfortably in her quarters, warm mug of coffee cradled in her hand, Kathryn gazes out at the flash of passing stars.

_I am what the universe has made me, and I am what I choose to become._

_And what I choose to become is Kathryn Janeway, Captain of Voyager._

_I choose love. I choose anger. I choose determination. I choose hope._

_I choose my crew._

_I choose to give my love to them._

_And they choose to give their love to me._

Letting her mind drift back over the past few days and all that has occurred, she finds herself thinking once more of the blank, empty person walking up the garden path.

So much taken. So much destroyed. So much she had, in her guilt and her grief, herself let go.

And so foolish of the simulation, to think that it could destroy enough of her that her mind and her heart and her soul would not find a way to return.

_I choose to be._

How foolish of her illness and her enemies and her sorrow, to believe that they had her in their power. How foolish of her guilt and her loneliness and her emptiness, to believe that they could ever erase the love she had for her crew, or the love that they had given to her, again and again.

How very foolish of them all, not to realize how she and her crew would hold on to each other, her love for them and their love for her interlocking to form a rope to she could use to pull herself back to them, to pull herself back to herself. And to pull herself forward, into the final frontier of the unknown future.

_No matter how much of myself I lose, there are some gifts I have been given that nothing can take from me._

_And there are some things I will always choose to become._

Coffee in hand, Kathryn Janeway leans back in her favorite chair, listening to the soft hum of her starship’s engines as Voyager soars on through the stars.


	16. Epilogue: The Void

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specific content warnings in the middle of the six lines of stars...  
> *  
> *  
> *  
> Content warnings:  
> \- Mentions of trauma and depression  
> \- Technically a cliffhanger ending, but only if you haven’t seen ‘The Void’  
> \- Food  
> *  
> *  
> *

There is a part of her that still marvels that they are here, that they got through it all. Even more than she has after so many of the other crises that have buffeted Voyager, Kathryn finds herself reveling in the small moments, in the clink of glasses and cutlery in the mess hall, in B’Elanna and Tom’s smiles and laughter as Seven brings out the next course of the formal dinner. Seven, culinary expert. Who would have thought it?

“Is there any salt?” Tom asks, probing the food with his fork.

“Additional seasoning is not required,” Seven informs him. “If the quail hasn't been prepared to your satisfaction, I could replicate something more to your liking. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich, perhaps.”

Tom raises his eyebrows, cutting eyes at Kathryn as she and Chakotay laugh. “Actually, it's...delicious just the way it is.”

The group’s laughter is interrupted by a sudden lurch of the ship, tableware clinking and sliding as everyone jerks in their seats.

Kathryn pivots to peer at the stars outside. “Captain to the bridge, report!”

“We are being pulled off course,” Tuvok responds.

“How?”

“I am not certain. It appears to be some kind of graviton surge.”

Kathryn tosses her napkin onto the table. “On my way.”

 

Once again, Voyager’s viewscreens show only black vacuum. But the anomaly they are trapped in now is of a more dangerous variety than the void they travelled through two years before, when only radiation blotted out the stars.

This time, there is no way out of the anomaly known as the Void to its inhabitants--inhabitants who don’t ask questions before raiding for supplies.

This time, their failed escape attempt has left Voyager with so little energy that the darkness has crawled inside Voyager as they ration every last trace of light. Although they all remained professional in the darkened briefing room, Kathryn could see the grimness of their situation reflected in her crew’s shadowed eyes. Now she sits in the darkness of her ready room, staring into the blackness of the viewport.

The door chimes.

“Come in.”

Chakotay walks in, Tuvok behind him.

Sometimes Kathryn reflects that, ironically, Tuvok has the worst poker face on the crew--or at least he does to her. She could see the stiffness in his jaw and the grim watchfulness in his eyes on the bridge, after she ordered the crew not to take General Valen’s food. She has been waiting for this.

Chakotay hands her the PADD. “An updated inventory of supplies.” As she takes the PADD, he folds his arms behind his back, looking down at her. “We got back less than half of what was stolen.”

She skims the PADD for several seconds, waiting to see which of them will speak first. Neither does, but they continue lurking in front of her desk. She looks up.

“Doesn’t take two of you to deliver a PADD. What’s on your mind.”

Chakotay exchanges a glance with Tuvok and evidently draws the short straw. “We want to be clear about what our policy’s gonna be, while we’re in the Void.”

She gazes levelly at him. “You think we should have taken Valen’s food.”

Tuvok’s whole face is stiff and worn, brows drawn together as he looks down at her. “Logic suggests that we may have to be more opportunistic if we intend to survive.”

Chakotay sighs softly. “We may not like Valen’s tactics, but he and his crew are still alive after five years in here.”

As Janeway explains to them how she has been scanning the Federation Charter for loopholes, only to find none, she thinks, not for the first time today, about the last time Voyager inhabited a dark void.

The last time this ship was trapped in endless nothingness, the void ate her away from the inside. In the darkness between stars, depression and guilt and isolation wore away at her until she could not see the difference between the nothingness outside the ship and the nothingness she felt inside herself.

Chakotay and the crew saved her then, protecting her from the darkness that almost pulled her away from them. But none of them spoke of the darkness again, and she put it from her mind until she found herself in darkness once again, fighting through the harsh dark waves of a simulated sea.

Now, Chakotay eyes her, and the glowing charter, with gaunt skepticism. “Should the crew be ready to die for those principles?”

This time, her worst fears have been realized. Around them is a nightmare worse than the first void, when she was falling but the crew around her was healthy and safe, and worse than the circular prison of the simulation, when she had the comfort of knowing the crew had escaped.

This time, they are all in the Void together. Darkness surrounds them, and darkness creeps inside the ship as the lights go out. Darkness is trying to take them all, the desperation of the void erasing who they are and who they want to be.

But Kathryn has been through the darkness twice--or, no, more times even than that. She has been through the nothingness, and it has failed to erase her.

She knows the void.

She knows how to make it blink.

And she will not let it erase them now.

“If the alternative means becoming thieves and killers ourselves, yes.” She looks them in the eye. “But I'm betting that our principles are going to keep us alive.”

“Captain?” Tuvok asks.

In darkness, the people she loves have reached out to her, their connection burning away the isolation of the void. Now it is her turn to reach back to them. And, just maybe, to reach out further--to the ships circling outside, disconnected and alone, trapped with Voyager in the dark.

“The Federation is based on mutual cooperation. The idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Voyager can't survive here alone. But if we form a temporary alliance with other ships, maybe we can pool our resources and escape.”

The void tries to take everything. The void drains away all you’ve ever been certain of. In the darkness, nothing remains but what you have been given, and what you choose.

And they can always choose.

“As you've pointed out, the people we've encountered in this void are thieves and killers. Such individuals are hardly ideal allies,” Tuvok says.

“I agree,” she tells him.

“Then who are we going to form an alliance with?” Chakotay asks.

“Anyone who agrees to play by our rules. No killing, no stealing, and no giving up.” The determination inside burns stronger than her exhaustion and fear, the fire of a choice made each instant, and she tries to insert some of that fire into her words.

Tuvok looks skeptical. “Forgive me, Captain, but why would anyone who has survived by killing and stealing suddenly agree to those terms?”

“We'll offer to share our food and medical supplies, and defend ships that are attacked by raiders.”

“Captain, maybe you'd better take another look at that inventory,” Chakotay tells her, voice flat. “Our food and power reserves will be gone within a week. If we start giving everything away--”

“Maybe we'll only survive for two days instead of seven. On the other hand, if we share what we have instead of hoarding it, we might find other people willing to do the same. If we combine our technology, we can find ways of improving our situation.” She glances at the darkness outside the viewport. “And ultimately get the _hell_ out of this place.”

Tuvok and Chakotay are still regarding her skeptically, and she looks back and forth between their familiar faces. “We may lose a little weight, gentlemen, but we won't lose who we are.”

Chakotay’s face doesn’t lift, and Tuvok’s brow doesn’t unfurrow. But her two best and oldest friends in the Delta Quadrant murmur their formal assent, and as they exit the ready room, Kathryn lets out a long breath.

There have been times on Voyager’s journey when she gave orders with confidence not because she was sure about her course of action, but because she was the captain and did not want to invite questions.

This time is different. This time, she is sure.

Almost everyone, she thinks, has at one point or another been through the darkest of the darkness. And if it did not erase who they were then, she sure as hell isn’t going to let it drown them now.

_We will be who we are. We will be the individuals, and the crew, that we have chosen to be._

Turning, she heads back out to the waiting bridge.

_Together, we will make it through this void. Together, we will become._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This is the longest fic (or anything!) I’ve written, and writing it has been fun and difficult and challenging and rewarding. I would dearly love to hear what you think, even if it’s just a one-word comment! I hope you enjoyed the story, and thank you for reading. <3**
> 
> Some notes about credit, inspiration, and extras:
> 
> * The idea for the garden comes pretty directly from a Tamora Pierce novel. In the original story, a character who has just (almost) died finds herself looking at an overgrown garden that would take years to restore. As a kid, the only takes on life after death that I’d read, even in fantasy novels, were variations on good-place-versus-bad-place, and this was a strikingly different, offbeat look at where someone might go after death, or while transitioning between life and death. I must have read the book over well over a decade ago, but that one paragraph about the garden really stuck with me, and it seemed like the perfect peaceful-but-haunting setting to use for KJ’s “afterlife.”
> 
> * “And she has her love for them” comes from A Wrinkle In Time, of course. :)
> 
> * This isn’t really a credit/direct inspiration so much as a fic with a similar premise I read a few years ago, which may have been bouncing around in my head in ways that influenced me when I wrote my own virtual-reality Voyager fic: [UN.real.ITY](https://archiveofourown.org/series/236586) by Konea, which I will rec to anyone in any circumstances, and especially to anyone who liked my fic. Like my story, UN.real.ITY features the Voyager crew in a simulation, KJ as the last one left in the simulation, and other unfortunate ships who did not fare as well as Voyager...aaand other than that it’s completely different, and features gorgeous turns of phrase, KJ’s mom, and Admiral Nechayev (always a win in my book). Go read go read go read!
> 
> * Kathryn’s remembered conversations in the Chapter 12, Kirk and Uhura’s lines from the TOS clip, and all of the dialogue in the epilogue come straight from “Caretaker,” “The Changeling,” and “The Void” respectively and are not my writing. (As ever, the chakoteya.net transcripts were a huge help with this <3)
> 
> * By the power vested in me, the official theme song of this fic is [Dance to Another Tune](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc8pxJBeTSo) by First Aid Kit. 
> 
> * I also listened to [this specific piano cover of the Lullaby from Pan’s Labyrinth when I was writing the garden scenes...which, as luck would have it, is only present on the Internet as the first song in this Ancillary Justice fanmix](https://8tracks.com/citizenseivarden/that-song-you-re-humming). (You don’t have to have an an account to listen, and it shouldn’t show you an ad when you listen for the first time). ([This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxqdfCuhU28) is a similar but slower version on Youtube.)


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